NEW VOLUME 2

Psychology
Now “THE MORE OPEN
WE CAN BE, THE
TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR MIND
FOR A HAPPIER, HEALTHIER LIFE

MORE POWER
WE HAVE”
1 3
pag 2
OF E
es
X
ADV PERT
ICE
MIKA
SIMMONS
ON BREAKING THE

TABOO
OF WOMEN’S
HEALTH
DECLUTTER
YOUR LIFE
FREE
YOUR MIND

SMALL CHANGES
Edition
Digital

+
OVERCOME SIBLING RIVALRY
EXPLORE THE
BREAK UP WITH SOCIAL MEDIA
FRIENDSHIP
SECOND
EDITION

LEARN TO EMBRACE BOREDOM

 VOLUME 2

Psychology
Now TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR MIND
FOR A HAPPIER, HEALTHIER LIFE

Understanding human behaviour and mental processes, whether our

own or those belonging to others, is essential if we want to make better
decisions and lead happier lives. Why do we feel certain emotions in
specific situations? Why do we behave in particular ways? And what can
we do to overcome the things that hold us back? Delve into the world of
psychology and build a better relationship with your mind. Learn how to
be kind to it, unlock its full potential and use it to your advantage.
In the pages that follow, we explore 10 of the world’s most unethical
psychology experiments, the nature versus nurture debate, and sibling
rivalry. We also look into what makes us shy, why we lie, the reasons we
laugh, and the benefits of being bored. We consider ways to improve
our mental health, such as saying goodbye to social media, making and
breaking friendships, and the benefits of meditation. We also look at the
psychology behind concepts such as fight or flight, the placebo effect and
bystander behaviour. Packed full of expert guidance from psychologists,
counsellors and other professionals, we also speak exclusively to actress
and activist Mika Simmons about breaking the taboo of women’s health
and the importance of talking. The mind is a powerful tool. Learn how to
take control of your own mind today for a happier, healthier tomorrow.
 VOLUME 2

Psychology
Now
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 CONTENTS

8
YOUR BRAIN POWER
30
MEMORY & RETAINING
INFORMATION
40
16
WHAT MAKES US SHY?
WHY DO WE LIE?

44
DECLUTTER YOUR LIFE

32
5 MEMORY
MYTH BUSTERS

34
THE NATURE VS
50
IT’S A
NURTURE DEBATE LAUGHING MATTER
20
BREAKING THE TABOO
OF WOMEN’S HEALTH 52
THE BLIND EYE

56
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF
THE CLIMATE CRISIS
6 PSYCHOLOGY NOW
 CONTENTS

64
5 FACTS ABOUT
84
THE BENEFITS
102
THE PLACEBO EFFECT
HYPNOSIS OF BOREDOM

66
HOW TO NAVIGATE
88
YOUR BRAIN ON MUSIC
SIBLING RIVALRY
IN ADULTHOOD 108
WHEN EATING
BECOMES AN ISSUE
70
10 UNETHICAL
PSYCHOLOGY
EXPERIMENTS
113
UNDERSTANDING
90 NIGHTMARES

76
BREAK UP WITH
GRADES OF GRIEF

114
SOCIAL MEDIA
94
COMPLEX LOSS
DECIDING IS DIFFICULT

120
96
THE POWER
FIGHT OR FLIGHT

FIGHT
FLIGHT

OF FRIENDSHIP

78
COGNITIVE BIAS
© Getty Images; Mika Simmons © Ruth Crafer

124
MEDITATION &
THE BRAIN
PSYCHOLOGY NOW 7
 YOUR BRAIN POWER

YOUR

POWER
20 things you need to
know about the human
body’s computer

WORDS LAURA MEARS

1
How fast does the brain work?
Brain speed is difficult to measure, but scientists from MIT think they have an answer. To test the processing power of the
visual cortex, they flashed images for fractions of a second to see if people could recognise them. Before the test, they
expected the brain to take 100 milliseconds to decode the information. But afterwards, it became clear that our brains
can work almost ten times faster, decoding entire pictures in as little as 13 milliseconds. How does that compare to a
supercomputer? Current estimates from benchmarking experts suggest that the brain is up to 30 times faster than IBM’s Sequoia.

8 PSYCHOLOGY NOW

Emotions
help us to
cope with the
situations that
triggered them
and prepare for
the future
2
How do we
determine
the  smartest
species?
Designing tests to measure
animal intelligence is a challenge that
scientists have been working on for decades.
The simplest way to assess intelligence
is to measure the size of the brain; in
general, the bigger the brain, the smarter
the animal. But this isn’t always the case.
Other tests involve looking for signs
of intelligence that we recognise
in ourselves: the ability to delay
gratification, to recognise oneself in a
mirror, to make and use tools, to solve
problems, and to respond differently
to different individuals. The tests try to
get at whether animals can make reasoned
decisions, or whether they’re just learning
patterns and responding automatically.
PSYCHOLOGY NOW
YOUR BRAIN POWER
3
How much
energy does
the brain use?
The brain uses around a fifth of
our energy: about 400 calories
every day. That might sound like a lot, but
it’s actually surprisingly efficient. Its power
consumption is around 20 Watts, barely
more than a low-energy light bulb. The
brain uses around two thirds of its energy
to send messages, and the rest for
maintenance and repairs.
4
What is ‘grey
matter’?
You can think of the brain as
being a bit like a telephone
network. The bodies of the
brain cells are the callers, sending and
receiving the signals, and the axons are the
wires, linking the network together. Like real
wires, brain cell axons transmit signals using
electricity. To stop the signals getting
crossed and to help the messages move
faster, the axons have insulation. Known
as myelin sheaths, this insulation contains
layers of white-coloured fat, visible inside
the brain as ‘white matter’. The bodies of
the cells don’t have this insulation, so they
appear grey.
5
Why do we
have emotions?
Emotions have lots of parts. The
first is the physical response in
the body: the tears, the laughter,
the sweating, the heart beating faster. The
second is the change in the way we think,
like heightened senses when we’re afraid
or recalling old memories when we’re sad.
And the third is the change in our
behaviour, perhaps avoiding dangerous
situations or repeating actions that made us
happy. Emotions help us to cope with the
situations that triggered them, they help us to
prepare for the future, and they send signals
to the people around us, strengthening our
social bonds.
DEVELOPING
EMOTIONS
3 MONTHS
Small babies like to be held.
They cry when they’re put
down and feel safer when
they’re picked up.
6 MONTHS
As they get older, babies start to smile and laugh.
They start to get used to being by themselves.
9 MONTHS
Older babies start to trust the
people looking after them, but begin
to show fear around strangers.
12 MONTHS
By their first birthday, babies start
to learn to read emotions from
facial expressions and tone of voice.
2 YEARS
Toddlers experience strong emotions,
but don’t always have the words to
express what they’re feeling.
3 YEARS
Older toddlers begin to learn
the names for basic feelings,
like happy, sad and scared.
4 YEARS
Young children start to use
more words to describe their
feelings and begin to
develop empathy.
5 YEARS
Five year olds are aware of the
feelings of others, and of the
different ways people react to
the same situations.
9
 YOUR BRAIN POWER

7
How different
are human and
chimp brains?
Chimpanzees are some of the
most intelligent animals on the
planet, but as smart as they are, chimps’ brain
power pales in comparison with our own.
Our brains are three times bigger than
theirs: this huge size difference is down to
changes in our cerebral cortex, the region
responsible for processing, planning and
intelligence. We’ve got around double the
number of brain cells in there, and they
make more connections.

6 the brain
9
Why do we Can gut
dream? bacteria
really control
Many scientists think that
dreaming has something to do
with the way the brain makes
is free to your mind?
There are trillions of microbes
memories. The brain learns by making
and strengthening connections between
explore new in every millilitre of your digestive contents,
and they have a direct line to your brain.
different neurones. This allows us to make
sense of the world around us. During the
connections Changes in gut bacteria influence mood and
behaviour. The gut’s enteric nervous system
day, we do this in a way that’s guided by
incoming sensory signals, but at night, this
influx of information stops. With the input
on its own sends signals upwards via the vagus nerve,
and bacteria seem to be able to interfere with
the messages.
turned off, the brain is free to explore new
connections on its own. This allows it to
make connections between facts that weren’t
previously linked up, helping us to solve
complex problems.

BETA
Fast, low-amplitude waves reveal a brain hard at work.
They happen when we’re awake and engaged.

ALPHA
Slower alpha waves happen when the brain is

8
resting. We’re still awake, but we’re relaxed.
Why do we
become
forgetful
DELTA as we get
These slow, long waves happen when the brain is older?
resting; you’re fast asleep but not dreaming. Around two in five people start to
lose their memory after the age
of 65. The brain gets smaller
and levels of serotonin and
THETA
Large, slow theta waves, signalling dreaming and dopamine start to fall, and
daydreaming, occur when the mind is disengaged. this seems to affect our
ability to make new
memories. Changes in
metabolism and blood
GAMMA
When you’re dreaming, bursts of gamma waves cut supply can also affect
through, representing new connections forming. the way we think.

10 PSYCHOLOGY NOW
 YOUR BRAIN POWER

10
How does the 3 WRITING 4 MEMORY
brain store
memories? THE MEMORY RETRIEVAL
The brain’s short-term memory The cerebral cortex The brain reactivates
storage is in the prefrontal cortex, the passes the information the connections written
part of the brain behind the centre of the forehead. The to the hippocampus, into the cortex by the
left side of this region lights up when we’re working with which controls the hippocampus, retrieving
words, and the right when we’re remembering spatial writing of episodic the pattern stored by
patterns. Longer-term memory storage happens elsewhere memories. the original experience.
and falls into two main categories: implicit and explicit.
Implicit memories are unconscious, like muscle memory,
and they form in the cerebellum and the basal ganglia.
Explicit memories are conscious, and they can either
be episodic (things that happened) or semantic (facts).
They’re formed by the hippocampus, which takes
on the role of ‘writing’ the data into the brain,
often when we’re sleeping. It does this by
strengthening connections in the neocortex,
on the very outer surface of the top of the
brain. It also talks to the amygdala, the 2
brain’s emotional centre, tying in the
feelings that the memory evokes.

4
3
1INCOMING
INFORMATION
Incoming sensory and
emotional signals light up sets
of brain cells in different parts 1
of the cerebral cortex.

2MEMORY
STORAGE
The hippocampus
encourages neurones to
make or strengthen their
connections, linking the areas
that form the experience.

Implicit
memories are
unconscious...
Explicit memories
are conscious
PSYCHOLOGY NOW 11
 YOUR BRAIN POWER

11
What’s a
stroke?
Strokes are like heart
attacks, but in the
brain. These medical
emergencies happen when the blood supply
to a part of the brain suddenly stops, often
due to a blood clot or a bleed. Without
oxygen, the brain cells start to starve and
die, so the faster the blood supply returns
to normal, the better. Drugs can be used to
help to dissolve blood clots, and surgical
procedures can help to remove them,
minimising the damage. If someone suffers
from a small stroke, the brain can sometimes
repair itself, but larger areas of damage can
have lasting effects. These differ depending
on where in the brain the stroke happened.

1
FATTY PLAQUE
Lumps of fat, cholesterol and calcium can
start to build up inside the blood vessels.

13
2 What
NARROWING does the
The plaque takes up room inside the blood
vessel, slowing the blood flow as cells try to
brain need
squeeze past. to stay
conscious?

12
3 Why We can try to understand more about
CLOT FORMATION can’t we consciousness by looking at what
As the slow blood scrapes past the rough consciously happens when it’s gone. We tend to lose
edges of the plaque, a clot can start to form. control consciousness when the blood flow to
our bodies? the brain stops. This can happen if blood
4 Voluntary control comes from the cerebral pressure drops, during a stroke or if there are
BLOCKAGE cortex, but not all our systems receive their problems with the heart. So the brain needs
When a clot forms inside the vessel, it can
instructions from that part of the brain. oxygen to stay conscious. But we can also
completely block the flow of blood.
Directions to move our muscles come from lose consciousness as a result of a general
5 the motor part of the cortex, putting them anaesthetic. When brain cells send signals,
under conscious control. But directions to our they usually get feedback in response, but
STROKE
If the blood flow stops, part of the brain can internal organs come from deeper structures, under anaesthetic this feedback stops. The
become starved of oxygen and the cells can like the hypothalamus. effect seems to be strongest in the cerebral
start to die. cortex, which handles thinking and memory.

Strokes
happen when
the blood
supply to a
part of the
brain suddenly
stops
12 PSYCHOLOGY NOW
 YOUR BRAIN POWER

14
How does
the brain
control
bodily
functions?
The internal organs do their jobs without

15
too much help from the brain, but there are How does
times it needs to intervene. Signals from the sleep affect
brain help to ensure the organs are working brains?
together to meet the body’s current needs. Sleep lets our brain
The brain controls the organs using a two- activate its self-cleaning
part set of nerves called the autonomic programme, bathing nerve cells in fluid and
nervous system. The ‘sympathetic’ part of this sweeping away the molecular debris of the
system gears the organs up for fight or flight, day. Lack of sleep can lead to a buildup of
and the ‘parasympathetic’ part calms them waste, slowing brain cells down in the short
down so that they can rest and digest. term, and increasing the risk of brain disease

WHAT CAN THE BRAIN
CONTROL?
The sympathetic and
parasympathetic nervous systems
make small adjustments to our
internal organs…
STOMACH
When the brain triggers a fight or flight
response, it tells the stomach to stop churning.
LIVER
A signal from the brain tells the liver to
release glucose into the blood when we’re
angry or afraid.
PANCREAS
A rest signal from the brain tells the pancreas
that it’s time to start making digestive enzymes.
16
in the long term. Can we
become
Sleep lets brainier?
In total, we have around
our brain 86 billion brain cells,
wired together by 10 trillion synapses.
We learn by making new connections in
activate its this network, changing the strength of old
connections, and pruning connections
self-cleaning we no longer need. Most of this rewiring
happens before our tenth birthdays. As
programme we get older, our ability to make new brain
cells and new connections decreases, but it
doesn’t disappear. Take black-cab drivers for
example, the memory centre of their brains
physically grows as they learn to navigate
London’s streets. So if you keep on learning,
you’ll be brainer.

KIDNEYS
The brain can change urine production and
alter the amount of salt and water that
the kidneys reabsorb.

ADRENAL GLANDS
When the brain sends fight or flight signals, the
adrenal glands flood the blood with adrenaline.

ABDOMINAL BLOOD VESSELS
The brain can send blood away from the
digestive system and towards the muscles
when we need to stop churning.

SALIVARY GLANDS
The brain can turn saliva production on when
we’re resting, or off when we need to run.

LUNGS
The brain can relax or constrict the airways,
and match airflow to oxygen demand.

SMALL INTESTINE
When the brain prepares the body for fight or
flight, contractions in the intestines slow down.

LARGE INTESTINE
When the brain sends signals to rest and
digest, activity in the intestines increases.

BLADDER
© Getty Images

The brain can stop the bladder releasing

urine when we’re under stress.

PSYCHOLOGY NOW 13
 YOUR BRAIN POWER

17
What do the different parts of the brain do?
The brain has three main zones: the forebrain at the top, the midbrain deep inside, and the hindbrain underneath,
close to the spinal cord. The hindbrain is the most ancient part, and it handles the most fundamental parts of our
biology. The brainstem controls breathing, swallowing and heartbeat, and the cerebellum looks after fine-movement
control and muscle memory. The midbrain coordinates more complex information. The hypothalamus keeps a
constant check on the body, making minute adjustments to maintain a steady state. The limbic system handles emotions, and the
hippocampus controls our memories. The forebrain looks after the most complex processes of all. The cerebrum is by far the largest part
of the brain, and it does the thinking. It has two halves, each divided into four lobes. Together they handle sensory information, reasoning,
planning and emotional control.

1
FRONTAL 12 FOURTH
10
LOBE VENTRICLE
This pair of lobes 1 This fluid-filled space
control thought, sits inside the brainstem,
reasoning and 7 draining cerebrospinal
short-term fluid into the
memory. They spinal cord.
allow us to 2 4 14
imagine, plan 11
and respond. 9
6
LIMBIC
2
SYSTEM 5
This is the emotional part of 3
the brain. It drives our feelings of
pleasure, pain, fear, anxiety and love. 8 10 13

3 TEMPORAL LOBE THIRD

11
The lobes near the ears process VENTRICLE
auditory information and also handle The third ventricle connects
auditory memory. the lateral ventricles to the
fourth ventricle.

4 LATERAL VENTRICLE
12 PARIETAL LOBE
These fluid-filled, horn-shaped cavities
7 CORPUS CALLOSUM This lobe handles most incoming
sit on either side of the brain.
This bundle of fibres connects the left sensory data, including taste, touch
side of the brain to the right. and movement.
5 PITUITARY
Known as the ‘master gland’, this
8 BRAINSTEM 13 CEREBELLUM
hormone factory sends chemical
messages into the blood, controlling This ancient part of the brain looks after The word cerebellum means ‘little brain’.
the other glands in the body. essential bodily functions like breathing It helps to coordinate movement and
and heartbeat. store muscle memory.

6 HYPOTHALAMUS
This acts as a thermostat, internal clock,
appetite controller, water regulator and
hormone centre.
9 THALAMUS 14 OCCIPITAL LOBE
This part works as a junction box, This lobe, at the back of the brain,
routing incoming and outgoing primarily processes incoming data from
information to the right place. the eyes, and handles visual memory.

14 PSYCHOLOGY NOW
 YOUR BRAIN POWER

19
What is
brain
freeze?
The brain can’t feel
pain, but its outer
covering (the meninges) can. When the
blood flow here changes, it can really
hurt. The main artery that supplies the
brain is the carotid artery; it runs up
through the neck, close to the blood
vessels inside the mouth and throat.
When the blood here gets cold, the
anterior cerebral artery behind the eyes
can start to widen. Cold can also trigger
the trigeminal nerve, which also affects
the blood supply to the brain. Warming
the mouth lets the blood vessels return to
normal, helping the pain to subside.

Studies
of twins and
20
Do we
need all
of adopted of our
brain?
children In 2009, doctors
described a girl in Germany who was living

18
What makes a normal life despite being born without
a person
intelligent
suggest that the right hemisphere of her brain. In 2014,
a similar story emerged about a woman
or stupid?
The most famous
IQ is an equal in China who had been living without her
cerebellum. The developing brain has
way to measure intelligence is the IQ test.
Developed in the 20th century, it attempts combination an ability called ‘neuroplasticity’, which
allows nerve cells to take on new roles. This
to assess people’s ability to perform certain
mental tasks. People who get one question
right are more likely to get the others right,
of nature incredible ability enables doctors to perform
a procedure called a hemispherectomy. In
rare cases of severe epilepsy in children,
even if the questions are of a different type.
This is known as the ‘general intelligence
and nurture surgeons can remove half of the brain to stop
the seizures. Amazingly, the other half adapts
factor’. It’s less about remembering facts and to take on its jobs.
more about being able to think abstractly,

© Getty Images/ grivina/ CSA Images/ Chris Madden/ Kauriana

use reasoning and solve problems. Studies
of twins and studies of adopted children
suggest that IQ is an equal combination of
nature (genetics) and nurture (environment).
So far, scientists have found more than 500
genes with a link to IQ, but we still don’t
really know what makes some people
smarter than others.

PSYCHOLOGY NOW 15
 WHAT MAKES US SHY?

WHAT MAKES US

Being shy can

impact the way we
live our lives, but
is it a trait that
can be overcome?
Or do we need to
learn to embrace
our shyness?

WORDS JULIE BASSETT

oing to parties, giving

G presentations, attending
networking events or after-
work drinks… These social
interactions are just part of
normal life for so many people, passing
by without too much consideration. But
for those who are shy, these engagements
can feel more like challenges, or hurdles
to be overcome, which fill a person with
apprehension and anxiety.
Shyness is a quality that is found in
cultures around the world. It’s often grouped
in with other conditions and traits, such as
social anxiety (see boxout above right) or
introversion, but it is distinct from both
of these. Shyness isn’t a phobia of social
situations in the same way that social
anxiety is, and an introvert often prefers

16 PSYCHOLOGY NOW

SOCIAL
ANXIETY
While shyness and social anxiety
share many traits, they are not
the same thing. According to the
NHS, social anxiety (or social
phobia) is “a long-lasting and
overwhelming fear of social
situations.” It is an intense fear
and can have a very big impact
on everyday life. It’s normal to
worry about going into social
events or new situations, but
social anxiety is more severe. It
can cause panic attacks, physical
symptoms like feeling sick or
heart palpitations, constantly
worrying about doing something
wrong, a dislike of being
watched and a general fear
of normal everyday activities
that might involve interaction
with others. Social anxiety can
sometimes be linked to other
mental health issues too, such
as anxiety or depression. For
those who find their shyness
overwhelming or if it’s impacting
on daily life, speak to your GP to
see what help is available.
time alone to re-energise, turning down
invitations through choice, not worry. Shy
people often want to be able to interact with
others, to take part in events or give confident
speeches, but find themselves unable to do
so, consumed instead by a sense of dread,
anxiousness or uncertainty.
The late Bernardo J Carducci (1952–2018),
a professor of psychology and former
director of the Shyness Research Institute at
the Indiana University Southeast, USA, was
an internationally recognised researcher
in the field of shyness. His main area of
study was in finding ways to help people
overcome their innate shyness. “Shyness
can be defined as the presence of anxious
reactions and excessive self-consciousness
and negative self-evaluation in response to
PSYCHOLOGY NOW
WHAT MAKES US SHY?
Results from an earlier study, conducted
some people in 2010 by a team of American and Chinese
scientists, suggest that around 20% of people
are naturally are born with Sensory Perception Sensitivity
(SPS), which can manifest as being inhibited.
more prone SPS may account for some cases of shyness,
as well as other traits such as introversion or
to shyness conditions like social anxiety.
But there is much more to shyness than
any neurological explanation. The trait is
than others often linked to the way we think other people
perceive us, focusing our anxieties inwards.
Low self-esteem can be a trigger for shyness:
real or imagined social interactions,” he wrote we don’t value ourselves and therefore
in an article for the American Psychological assume we have no value for others, limiting
Association in 2017. “Specifically, these our engagement in social situations. But it’s
experiences must occur to the degree that not always about low self-esteem; shyness
it produces enough discomfort to interfere is often triggered by a worry about how we
with and inhibit one’s ability to perform are thought about by others: ‘Will I say the
successfully in social situations.” wrong thing?’ ‘What if I react incorrectly?’
He identified three different components to ‘What if I accidentally drop something?’ In
shyness, which broadly included the physical the moment, these are very real worries and
effects (a raised heart rate or ‘butterflies’); concerns that are difficult to brush aside.
the cognitive reactions (self-consciousness,
negativity, lack of self-belief, worry that
everyone is watching, or the fear of doing
something wrong); and finally the behaviours
exhibited (avoidance of situations, not
speaking up, or limiting eye contact).
Nature or nurture?
There is evidence to suggest that some
people are born more prone to shyness
than others, but it’s not down to a specific
‘shyness gene’. A 2012 study from Vanderbilt
University (published in Social Cognitive
and Affective Neuroscience) found that there
may be a link between shyness and deficits
in two key areas of the brain: the amygdala
and hippocampus. This is caused by what is
known as ‘habituation failure’, when a person
doesn’t adapt to new stimuli. Researchers
monitored the brains of the participants
while they were shown pictures of unfamiliar
faces multiple times. For the participants
considered to be uninhibited, these areas
of the brain were triggered when the faces
were new, but the response declined the
more times they saw the same faces (a
process called habituation). However, for the
participants considered to be inhibited, the
same areas of the brain continued to respond
to the faces, regardless of whether they were
new or being shown again.
“This failure to habituate provides a novel
neural mechanism for understanding the shy
and cautious behaviour that is characteristic
of inhibited individuals,” explained the
study’s lead author, Dr Jennifer Blackford.
“Individuals who familiarise more slowly
may find encounters with new people
overwhelming and thus avoid new social
experiences, whereas those who adjust
more quickly may be more likely to
seek novel social experiences.”
17

Without intervention, this negative self-talk
will continue, causing our shyness to prevent
us from enjoying social situations.
The way we are raised, and our
experiences throughout childhood, are
also influential factors in whether or not we
become shy as we grow up. Behavioural
inhibition, for example, can start in childhood.
Overprotective parents may limit certain
behaviours or restrict social activities, which
can mean children don’t get the chance to
develop confident social skills. As we get
older, we start to self-manage our behaviours,
limiting them to what we feel comfortable
with, which then creates a cycle of shyness.
For example, for a child who is predisposed
to shyness, it can be hard to interact with
other children at playtime or when working
together on a project. As time goes on, the
familiar and comfortable behaviour is that
of being an observer – rather than an active
participant – in social situations, which makes
it harder to break the cycle.
As adults, we may already have a pattern
of behaviour that relates to our shyness.
Someone who has never had the confidence
to speak out in a business meeting before,
18
WHAT MAKES US SHY?
Shyness shouldn’t be viewed
as a barrier to success
for example, will find that it becomes more
difficult to make that first comment. Over
time, worry creeps in… they may think that
speaking up would appear out of character,
and that this might attract unwanted
attention, or perhaps even judgement, from
their colleagues.
Shyness can affect people in different
ways and in different areas of life, some
of which can be more problematic than
others. Shyness can also influence the path
that our lives take, as we’re drawn to those
things that make us feel most comfortable.
Someone who is generally shy is unlikely
to follow a career path in television, for
example, or pursue a role that requires a lot
of networking and social interaction, unless
they can learn to master their shyness to
follow a particular passion. This can be one
of the biggest problems with shyness – it
can become a hurdle that prevents us from
following the path we want to follow. In a
work environment, being shy can mean being
overlooked. Those who speak up and engage
in discussions are noticed more, which can
help their career progression.
The way that shyness is viewed culturally
has an impact on our behaviours too. In a
BBC article, The Science Behind Why Some
Of Us Are Shy (adapted from an episode of
CrowdScience called Why Am I Shy?), it’s
reported that the traits of confidence and
extroversion are valued behaviours in the
USA. However, in some Asian countries,
being quieter is a more desirable trait.
These external and societal influences will
inevitably impact on the way that we view
our own shyness. In the Western world, we
may view our own shyness as a problem or
issue that needs to be solved, rather than
accepting it as part of our personality.
Overcoming shyness
Shyness isn’t a condition that necessarily
needs to be cured. It’s quite normal to feel
shy in certain situations, and generally it
doesn’t cause any real problems. However, if
shyness does develop into something more –
causing higher than normal levels of anxiety,
triggering depression, or having a noticeable
impact on quality of life – then this could be
social anxiety, which should be treated by a
psychological professional.
That said, many people do opt to seek help
to overcome or combat their shyness. This
may be because they’re struggling at work
when it comes to engaging with co-workers
or clients, or maybe they want to be able
to socialise without the worry. Cognitive
Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is usually the
most effective psychological therapy, by
getting to the root causes or beliefs that can
manifest as shyness.
CBT looks at changing thought patterns
and related behaviours, identifying those
thoughts that are negative and could be
contributing to patterns of shyness. It can
help patients to understand the key drivers
behind their shyness. For example, in the
work environment, feeling shy in meetings
or presentations could be a deep-seated fear
of saying the wrong thing in front of senior
colleagues, which could in itself be linked to
a strong work ethic and a drive to succeed.
CBT helps to unpick these connected strands,
learn to recognise unhelpful thoughts and
then put in place mechanisms and strategies
to cope with situations as they come up.
There is also something called the Social
Fitness Model (shyness.com) developed
by Dr Lynne Henderson, which suggests
that social fitness is something that
can be achieved in the same
way as physical fitness. In a
2011 research paper, Social
PSYCHOLOGY NOW
 WHAT MAKES US SHY?

Fitness: The Online Treatment of Shyness,

psychologist Peter Saunders said: “The term
‘Social Fitness’ refers to the idea that, similar
to physical fitness, in order to stay in social
shape we need to be constantly exerting
effort and working out by making social
contact with others.” It is essentially a form of
cognitive behavioural therapy, delivered with
an ethos of compassion. Changing long-term
behavioural patterns should be approached
sensitively and carefully.
This means that for those who have
a desire to be more confident in social
5 WAYS TO
situations, it will take plenty of practice, but
it can be achieved. It might be as simple as
starting small, by striking up a conversation
OVERCOME SHYNESS
with someone in a shop or while waiting for
a bus. The idea is to embrace or engineer
situations that challenge shyness so that, over
time, people develop strategies for dealing ACT CONFIDENT
with bigger social interactions. The important You might be shaking on the inside, but try to project an air of calm
thing to remember is that it’s not about trying confidence. It takes time and practice, as with any skill, but it can
to change who a person is; it’s about learning
how to recognise unhelpful thoughts and
make engagements easier.
address issues with social situations to make
them more manageable.

Embracing shyness TRY NEW THINGS

But is shyness really something that needs
Shy people tend to avoid new situations, but confronting that fear of
to be overcome at all? Maybe it’s better
just to accept being naturally a shy person. the unknown can help your overall self-confidence in other situations.
Shyness doesn’t mean that we can’t achieve
great things. Many well-known people have
spoken out about their own experiences of
shyness. The idea of a shy celebrity might OWN YOUR SHYNESS
seem somewhat of a paradox, given that
these are often people who have chosen to
Being shy is part of who you are, but it also doesn’t define you.
follow a path into the limelight. Take one Remember, it’s just one trait that makes up a very individual person.
of the celebrity world’s biggest apparent
exhibitionists Kim Kardashian. She is
reported to have once said: “I’m the girl who’s
too shy to dance in a nightclub – maybe for
one song, and then that’s it. The real Kim is
RE-FRAME YOUR THINKING
very shy and reserved and not outspoken Rather than worrying about how shy you are in social situations, focus
and loud like everybody assumes she is.” on your strong points, such as being a good listener or a loyal friend.
Other famous faces who have spoken out
about being shy include Johnny Depp, Keira
Knightley and Steven Spielberg.
What these celebrities have managed to do
is accept their natural shyness, but project a
STAY PRESENT
confident exterior to the world. It’s not about It’s easy to drift into our thoughts when we’re anxious, but stay in the
denying part of who they are, just that they moment and mindful of what’s happening around you. It can help you
are able to separate their life in the public stay calm and focused.
eye from their true self, as seen off-camera.
Shyness, then, certainly doesn’t need to be
a barrier to success, if it can be carefully
managed when needed. big life decisions are made in a measured and but those that they do have are deeply
The trait of shyness comes with other confident way. valued and long-lasting.
benefits too. Shy people are often observers, Shy people may find it hard to socialise Being shy doesn’t define a person; it’s
watching and studying in social situations, in large groups, but they are usually great just one behavioural trait that makes up a
© Getty Images / marzacz

rather than engaging. With this comes an
attention to detail and a better understanding
of human behaviour, which can be useful
skills. They’re also more likely to consider
risks and plan ahead, which means that any
friends. Often with a strong sense of empathy,
shyer people can be good listeners and
advice givers. They’re not prone to gossiping,
so are often considered trustworthy. Shy
people may have fewer friendships overall,
wonderful, unique individual. So while there
are some benefits to be had in learning to
manage common social situations without
anxiety, we should also embrace the shyness
as part of who we are.

PSYCHOLOGY NOW 19
 BREAKING THE TABOO OF WOMEN’S HEALTH

20 PSYCHOLOGY NOW
 BREAKING THE TABOO OF WOMEN’S HEALTH

BREAKING
THE
TA B O O OF
WOMEN’S

Having the confidence to talk about our

sexual health is harder than it should be,
but breaking down this barrier will
lead to better physical
and mental health

WORDS SARAH BANKES

ntil relatively recently, the

U stigma associated with mental

health issues was so great it
stopped us from talking about
them. We were more likely to
suffer in silence and carry the burden alone,
which ultimately made the problem worse.
Talking about women’s health suffers a
similar stigma – and a similar burden.
Maybe there is a lesson to be learned
in the way our approach to mental
health has changed, which can be
applied to gynaecological health too.
Over recent years, an increased
awareness drive of mental health
issues has helped enormously,
focusing on the importance of

PSYCHOLOGY NOW 21
 BREAKING THE TABOO OF WOMEN’S HEALTH

talking in particular. And while we still have
a long way to go, according to Mental Health
Foundation the number of people receiving
treatment for mental health issues increased
by 14.2% from the year 2000 to 2014. It seems
obvious that encouraging people to talk has
had a profoundly positive effect.
Perhaps, then, a similar approach needs to
be taken with our physical health. While this
might sound surprising because we already
seem better at doing that (it’s somehow easier
to be more vocal with colleagues about a sore
knee, for example, or to visit the doctor about
a persistent migraine, than it does sharing the
fact that you’re feeling depressed or anxious),
there is one area of our physical health that
we still feel uncomfortable talking about – to
healthcare professionals, friends, relatives,
colleagues, even our partners – and that’s
gynae health.
According to The Eve Appeal, 93% of
women never discussed gynaecological
health with their parents while growing
up. And 84% never spoke about the
female sexual anatomy with them. The
psychological impact this has on later life
is surprisingly significant, and the serious
health implications startlingly worrying.
Growing up believing we shouldn’t talk
about our reproductive organs leads to a
sense of shame and embarrassment. In
turn this encourages a whole host of
problems, from not seeking medical
advice when we suspect we should, to
avoiding gynaecological screenings
for things like cervical cancer. Life-
saving conversations are simply
not happening because we’ve been
conditioned to believe we should be
embarrassed to talk about our bodies. If
we don’t know and understand our
bodies, how can we identify when something
is wrong? If we’re too shy to seek advice, both
our physical and mental health are at risk.
Digging deeper
So, as intelligent, responsible adults, why
do we feel uncomfortable talking about
gynaecological matters? Where has this
awkwardness come from?
To fully understand the reasons behind
our attitudes towards sexual health, we
have to go way back and try to remember
what conversations were like growing up.
Do you remember your parents talking to
you about periods and safe sex? Perhaps
you do. Perhaps your mother sat you down
to explain the ‘birds and the bees’, or maybe
your father left a book in your bedroom that
explained it all, for you to peruse at your
own leisure. By the time these conversations
started to take place, though, it’s likely you
had already developed a self-consciousness.
Depending on how your parents addressed
such matters, there’s a good chance both
parties felt uncomfortable discussing them
and so avoided going into too much detail.
Very young children lack the inhibitions
found among older children, teenagers and
adults, which can be both a blessing and a
curse. Inhibition development is naturally a
very important part of growing up, but the
childlike quality of speaking your mind and
feeling free to talk openly (particularly to
parents) about anything and everything is
equally as important and fundamental to
our learning.
Children are inquisitive beings and ask
lots of questions. While it’s important to
answer their questions in a way that is
child- and age-appropriate, if as parents
we’re shooting down conversations about
our sexual anatomy or feeling embarrassed
to answer innocent questions our children
have about reproduction, children will be
conditioned to believe these subjects are
taboo. Then, when conversations arise
among their peers, they’ll not only lack
understanding and the ‘facts’, but they’re
also likely to feel embarrassed. This
embarrassment is often responsible for the
giggling or even mickey-taking that occurs
in the classroom or playground, but perhaps

93%
of women
never
discussed
gynae
health
with their
parents
growing
up
22 PSYCHOLOGY NOW

WHAT ARE THE Many women, let alone men, aren’t aware that
there are five types of gynaecological cancer
GYNAECOLOGICAL CANCERS?
1 OVARIAN
Ovarian cancer is the second most
common gynaecological cancer in
the UK, with more than 7,300 cases
each year, but it is the most difficult to
diagnose, as its symptoms are often
confused with less serious conditions,
such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).
SYMPTOMS
- Persistent bloating
- Persistent tummy and/or pelvic pain
- Difficulty eating or feeling full quickly
2 VAGINAL
Vaginal cancer is extremely rare, with
fewer than 300 new cases in the
UK each year. Around 20% of those
diagnosed said they had no symptoms
at all. Symptoms are usually a sign of
something less serious, like a vaginal
infection, but it’s important to keep an
eye on what’s going on.
SYMPTOMS
- Bleeding in between periods, after
menopause or after sex
- Unpleasant-smelling or blood-stained
vaginal discharge
- Pain during sex
- A lump in the vagina
- Itchy vagina
PSYCHOLOGY NOW
BREAKING THE TABOO OF WOMEN’S HEALTH
5
2 - Bleeding in between periods, after
3 human papillomavirus (HPV), which
3 VULVA
Around 80% of vulva cancer cases are in
women aged over 60. Again, symptoms
are usually a sign of something less serious,
but it’s important to see a doctor if you do
notice any of these symptoms.
SYMPTOMS
- Persistent itch
- Pain or soreness
- Change in skin colour (red/patchy)
- A lump
- A mole that changes shape or colour
4 WOMB (OR UTERINE/
ENDOMETRIUM)
Womb cancer is the most common
gynaecological cancer in the UK,
with more than 9,000 women being
diagnosed with it each year.
SYMPTOMS
menopause or after sex
- Heavier periods
- Vaginal discharge
5 CERVICAL
Cervical cancer is mostly caused by
is passed on through skin-to-skin
sexual contact. It usually disappears
by itself, but when it doesn’t, there
is a chance that abnormal cells can
develop, which is what a smear (Pap)
test looks for. These abnormalities can
Resource: The Eve Appeal (www.eveappeal.org.uk)
become cancerous if left untreated,
which is why cervical screening
appointments are so important.
SYMPTOMS
- Bleeding in between periods
or after sex
- Pain during sex
- Unpleasant-smelling vaginal discharge
23
 BREAKING THE TABOO OF WOMEN’S HEALTH
worst of all is that it leads to feelings of
shame and confusion, which can be very
damaging. Sadly, these feelings of shame
and confusion stick with us and are often
transported into adulthood where we feel
embarrassed to talk to even our closest
friends about gynae problems.
Where should it start
That’s not to say we should be having
conversations about sexual health with our
very young children. It’s just about being
mindful of how we answer their questions
when they do ask them, and how we make
them feel during these conversations. If we
make our children feel comfortable and
let them know that it’s natural to talk about
these things, it will make the more in-depth
conversations much easier to have when
they’re older. Helping our children (of both
sexes) to become more body aware and
letting them know that having conversations
about our bodies is perfectly welcome – even
24
Using
correct
language from
an early age is a
step to breaking
this taboo
encouraged – is an important first step to
breaking the silence.
We might think it’s appropriate or find it
easier to use euphemisms or nicknames to
refer to our sexual anatomy when talking to
our children (or even as adults when talking
to our peers), but this only reinforces the idea
that it’s embarrassing to talk about these body
parts. Using correct language from an early
age is another step to breaking this taboo. And
being guided by the individual child in terms
of ‘when’ and ‘how much’ seems like a sensible
way to approach the matter.
Why it’s so important
Physical changes to our bodies can affect the
way we feel, whether these changes are all
part of getting older or something to be more
concerned about. It can be a struggle to cope
with our emotions when experiencing these
changes, as they often cause confusion,
anxiety and worry, which are unpleasant
emotions in themselves. When combined
with feelings of embarrassment or shame,
our mental health can suffer as a result.
The importance of talking cannot be
stressed enough, whether it’s to someone
you know or someone outside your family
or friendship network.
Hopefully, the next generation of
adults will be better equipped with more
confidence and fewer reservations to talk
about gynaecological health. And once we
all start talking more, not only will we feel
better mentally, but we’ll be far more likely
to recognise when something isn’t quite
right and more forthcoming to speak to a
healthcare professional about it. Professor
Janice Rymer from The Royal College of
Obstetricians and Gynaecologists’ (RCOG)
states: “We must all work together to raise
awareness of the symptoms and signs of
gynaecological cancer, and break down the
mentality that gynaecological health is a
taboo subject. By encouraging both women
and men to talk about gynaecological health,
we can start to reduce the number of women
who die from gynaecological cancer.” It’s a
bold statement, but ultimately she’s right in
saying that the simple act of talking will save
lives, so let’s get better at it.
PSYCHOLOGY NOW

INTERVIEW
Mika Simmons
Actress, filmmaker and women’s health activist
Mika Simmons talks to Sarah Bankes about the
importance of shame busting and breaking the
silence when it comes to gynaecological health
What inspired you to want to
make a difference in the area of
women’s health?
I lost my mum to ovarian cancer in 2000.
In between that and setting up the Lady
Garden Foundation, I felt I wanted to do an
awareness drive. My mother was part of the
group of women who set up the women’s
liberation movement. She was an active
feminist her whole life, and incredibly
healthy. She originally trained as a nurse
and then went into being a leader for women;
her work was very much around women’s
issues. She was someone who looked to
alternative therapies to keep her mind and
body well, and to understand her own body.
So when she was diagnosed with stage 4
ovarian cancer, as a family we were quite
shocked that she hadn’t recognised the
symptoms. (The doctors hadn’t recognised
them either; they thought she had fibroids.)
I come from a line of nurses – my great-
the fact
my mum, of
all people,
didn’t know the
symptoms of
ovarian cancer
was baffling
PSYCHOLOGY NOW
BREAKING THE TABOO OF WOMEN’S HEALTH
THE LADY
GARDEN
FOUNDATION
019
fe r 2
Cra
Mika’s desire to raise
th
awareness of women’s
Ru
©
health issues soon led her
to bring together a group
of phenomenal women,
grandmother, my grandmother and my all of whom had a very
mother were all nurses – so the fact my mum, personal relationship with
of all people, didn’t know what the symptoms gynaecological health. And
of ovarian cancer were was baffling. so, in 2014, the Lady Garden
Foundation was born. The
Tell us about the work you’ve been
Lady Garden Foundation is
doing with Doctor Banerjee and how
that came about.
a national women’s health
charity, raising awareness
In between losing my mum and when
Doctor Banerjee moved in next door to me,
and funding for cutting-edge
studies and groundbreaking
I’d had this longing to do something about
awareness. So when Doctor Banerjee asked
research into the treatment
of gynaecological cancers
me if I would help her fundraise to do this
very important research, which has now at The Royal Marsden NHS
Foundation Trust. Mika and
come to fruition, I said that I would do it, but
only if the Royal Marsden agreed to let me do
an awareness drive as well – and that’s how
her fellow founders hope these
the Lady Garden Campaign was born.
The Lady Garden Foundation has been
studies will revolutionise the
treatment of these cancers.
funding Doctor Banerjee to create
25
 BREAKING THE TABOO OF WOMEN’S HEALTH

DOCTOR BANERJEE

Doctor Susana Banerjee (MBBS MA PhD FRCP) is a consultant medical

oncologist and research lead for the gynaecology unit at The Royal
Marsden. She is also reader in women’s cancers at the Institute of
Cancer Research. When Mika and Doctor Banerjee met in 2007, the
timing couldn’t have been better. Mika was already looking into how
to raise awareness of ovarian cancer, and on discovering that her new
neighbour specialised in ovarian cancer and the systemic treatment
of endometrial and cervical cancers, they immediately formed a
friendship, putting their heads together to tackle the cause.

Lady Garden has

helped to bring Doctor Susana Banerjee’s
women’s health issues research has helped to develop
to the forefront treatments for those diagnosed
with gynaecological cancers

medication to help women live a longer life

once diagnosed with gynaecological cancers.
The medication we have developed under
Doctor Banerjee has now been green-lit,
which is amazing. When you fund science,
you’re rolling the dice a bit, but of course
you’re going to back someone whose work
you believe in wholeheartedly. Doctor
Banerjee had already made great strides with
breast cancer treatment, so we knew she was
a leader in her field and that her thinking
was leading the way. The medication that
we’ve funded, which is called olaparib, has
only been offered to women in later stages of
ovarian cancer in the past, but it’s now being
offered to women in earlier stages.

Do you think people’s opinions and

mindsets have changed in recent years?
In 2013, when we first started to think about The Lady Garden
what the branding was going to be for the Foundation is a
national women’s
project and how we could best get the health charity, raising
nation’s attention to understand that there awareness and funding
was a gap in women’s knowledge, we looked
at what other charities had done before.
Another gynaecological health charity, which
I respect very much, had already tried to do
a campaign called the Vagina Campaign, but
unfortunately it wasn’t successful. I think
times have changed massively. We talked
about why that campaign hadn’t worked,
and I think it was too ‘in your face’; people
didn’t want to hear the word ‘vagina’ around
2011/2012. It’s amazing that today when
you Google ‘vagina’, there are endless news
pieces. I feel like the Lady Garden Foundation
has had a significant role in that change,
because we took a nickname that made us

26 PSYCHOLOGY NOW

Mika Simmons with her mum,
who despite being a nurse,
didn’t recognise the symptoms
of ovarian cancer. This drove
Mika to work towards raising
awareness of these cancers
You have to be phenomenally
strong in yourself to really
enjoy your uniqueness
laugh because we thought it was a bit twee,
and used it to grab people’s imagination.
It would make people think, ‘What is lady
garden?’ Then once beneath the surface, we
gave people all the information they needed.
In 2014, you needed to do that. Because of
the work that we’ve done, and work done by
other charities, such as The Eve Appeal and
Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust, people are now
much more open about it.
We’re in a period of people trying to
decloak their shame – both in the press
and on social media – and there are the
new generations coming through where
people are no longer willing to not be
unique. We’re in a period where people
are celebrating their individuality. Beauty
PSYCHOLOGY NOW
BREAKING THE TABOO OF WOMEN’S HEALTH
myths are being smashed in terms of what
is considered beautiful and acceptable, and
the Lady Garden Foundation has been a
huge part of that by leading the charge in
terms of talking more openly about our
gynaecological health.
Why do you think women find
it embarrassing to talk about
gynaecological health, even to
medical professionals?
I think at the heart of it is comparison and
shame. At the very deepest level, we’ve set up
a society where we’ve created these ‘norms’.
What the ‘normal’ vagina looks like; whether
or not you should have a bush or wax… the
Mika Simmons with
Doctor Susana Banerjee
number of women who say to me they didn’t
go to their smear test because they hadn’t
got waxed. It’s that shame of not wanting
someone to see you in your natural state.
I had a mother who was a feminist. In my
teens, I’d get home from school and there
would be a vagina examining workshop in
my house. The fact that a woman who was
that forward-thinking still didn’t recognise
her own symptoms is devastating. Shame is
a very real thing that stops people from going
to the doctor.
One of the reasons I did The Happy
Vagina podcast is because I wanted to
create something that enabled women to
hear every single variation on how women
look after their own health, and to be okay
with it. It’s so easy as human beings to be
affected by those around us. You have to be
phenomenally strong in yourself to really
enjoy your uniqueness.
Of course, there are lots of reasons why
Images © Mika Simmons and © Getty Images / David M. Benett
people aren’t going to their smear tests.
There have been massive cuts in terms of
government funding in the NHS, and there is
evidence to suggest that letters aren’t being
sent out in poorer parts of the UK. But I do
think the main reason is that we have shame
around sex, and shame around our sexual
organs, and sometimes we forget that the
vagina is this amazing organ that gives birth
and creates life. But because it’s also this
place where we enjoy intimacy and pleasure,
we get confused about what we’re going to
the doctor for.
27
 BREAKING THE TABOO OF WOMEN’S HEALTH

How do you think people’s mindsets
can be changed even more?
Talking. My call to arms with the Lady
Garden Foundation was that we all need to
talk more. Five years in I realised we’re all
saying we need to talk more, but we’re not
actually talking more. There’s a lot more
being put out in the press, and there’s more
awareness, but in reality are we actually
talking more? The more open we can be, the
more power we have for ourselves.
I hosted a panel called ‘How To Make Your
Vagina Happy’ for International Women’s
Day in March 2019. There were 400 women
in the room and the feedback we received
Through podcasts
was phenomenal. On the panel were four and panels, Mika is
women who had all had incredibly different opening discussion
of gynae health
experiences based on their backgrounds. The
comparisons were joyful, very funny at times,
and also quite heartbreaking to hear people’s
stories about how they became stuck with
their gynae health. Afterwards, a woman
came up to me and said, “I’ve just realised that
I haven’t gone for my smear because of a bad
experience I had.” She said that just listening
to everyone talking had encouraged her to
book the appointment and go.
It was following the success of this panel
that I decided to launch The Happy Vagina
podcast, as a way to get people talking and
change people’s mindsets.

THE The more that women hear each other

talk, the more progress we’ll make. And one
of the most important things is to not be
HAPPY judgemental of each other, and to celebrate
differences within us. I worry sometimes

VAGINA that some of the critical movements at the

PODCAST

Launched in January 2020

and hosted by Mika, The
Happy Vagina podcast
opens up a crucial dialogue
about fundamental female
issues, lack of education
around women’s experiences
and gynaecological health.
Empowering listeners with
information and heartfelt
accounts of female
experiences, the podcast
not only educates but also
entertains and enlightens
in a supportive way. Guests,
including Bryony Gordon and
June Sarpong, discuss their
formative years and current
relationships with their vaginas,
bodies, periods, sex and
getting tested.
Listen to the podcast here:
www.thehappyvagina.co

We’re all saying we need to talk more, but

we’re not actually talking more
28 PSYCHOLOGY NOW
 BREAKING THE TABOO OF WOMEN’S HEALTH

moment strongly imply there is a particular periods (for example), as well as women. what it was. But it scarred me. I was already
way of being. When human beings are their Young women are often taken off on their struggling to understand what it was all
highest selves and psychologically free, own to be taught about periods, but periods about myself. My mother threw a party for
they can expect all the different variations are what give us life; the period cycle is what me when I started my period. So there was
of experiences and life, and be okay with brings men and women into the world, and my mum who was celebrating it, me feeling
it. I hope that the more women talk about men should understand it too. As a starting very confused and these boys making fun
their own individual experiences, things point, that would be useful because it would of it. That combination creates confusion
will change for generations in the future and help to normalise periods for young boys. within your own body about what’s okay
people won’t feel such shame. In the workplace, I love what AllBright and what’s not okay, and then you spend the
It’s not necessarily about being is doing. It’s doing some work around rest of your life trying to hide your period.
completely open. Not everyone needs to making sure there are tampons in offices. And it’s nothing to be embarrassed about.
speak openly about their gynaecological There’s a movement towards having things Thankfully, it didn’t take me long to get over
health. In fact, in one of the podcasts, June to do with periods being more visible in the that, and I’m pretty free about it now.
Sarpong absolutely refuses to answer one workplace. It shouldn’t be something we feel The really important thing is for people
of the questions, and that’s great because we should have to hide. to be okay with what they’re okay with. So
that’s who she is. She’s very, very open about I started my period quite young. I if you’re a private person and you would
some other things. The most important things was probably the first in my class, and I like to be private about the ‘time of month’,
are that you really get to know yourself as remember being laughed at. I remember then that’s okay as long as it’s not coming
a woman, whatever age you are, and you’re boys making fun of me for having sanitary from a place of shame, and as long as it
okay with yourself in whatever way is right towels visible in my bag. As far as I’m doesn’t mean you’re not talking to other
for you, making sure that your decisions are concerned, they made fun of me because people about it. It must come from a healthy,
not coming from a place of fear or shame, they were frightened and didn’t understand positive place; from a place of freedom.
because that’s when we really get into trouble
with our gynae health.
Normalising talking
about gynae health
through The Happy
What are the negative implications of Vagina podcast
not talking about these issues?
If we don’t talk about these things, it means
we’re often poorly informed and we block
things out.
I just did a round table for The Power
of Women TV [programme], and we were
talking about gynae health. It became
apparent to me that three out of the six
women round the table thought that a smear
test was a test for all five gynae cancers.
These are very educated, grown women.
That’s the negative about not being open
about that area of our bodies and not talking
about it with our children.
There’s a movement to say that these
things should be taught at school and
there should be better sex education at
school. I’m not sure we should be leaving
the mental health and wellbeing of our
daughters in the hands of our teachers. It’s
down to the parents. I think there should
be more education for parents. Parents
should feel able to talk more openly and get Mika has welcomed some
more guidance. It would be fantastic if the well-known names onto
her podcast
government was able to support parents. Like
Images © Mika Simmons and © Getty Images / David M. Benett

I said, I had a feminist mother who talked

about everything, but that may not be right
for every family. Other families may prefer to
address these issues in a more private way,
and that’s okay as long as people are talking.

Do you think there’s more we can

do to encourage men to feel able to
talk about female issues without
feeling embarrassed? Driving real change, Lady
If there were to be just one change in schools, Garden is empowering women
and funding research
it should be that young men are taught about

PSYCHOLOGY NOW 29
 RETAINING
INFORMATION
We take it for granted, but how do we retain and
utilise information from our environment?

HOW WE 0.2
secs
0.25
secs
0.2-
0.5
secs

FORM AND
STORE ATTENTION
If something grabs our attention,
LONG-TERM we’re far more likely to remember
MEMORIES it. Neurons fire as we continue to
focus, ensuring a memory moves
The time it takes for a from short-term to long-term.
The thalamus plays a big role in
memory to really stick directing attention.
EMOTION
Events or things that cause an
emotional response are more likely
to be remembered because they
activate raised levels of activity
in the amygdala, and this arousal
means more information is taken in
and processed.
SENSATION
Sensory memory is based on receiving
information from our senses, so sight,
smell, touch etc. The lingering feeling
you have after someone touches your
arm is the sensory memory fading, and
this first information from the senses is
the starting point for any memory.

30 PSYCHOLOGY NOW
 MEMORY AND RETAINING INFORMATION

WORDS LYNSEY PORTER

TYPES OF MEMORY
M
emory is the capacity to
store and retain information,
then recall it for use when
needed. It is used by most
organisms to operate in the
most successful manner they possibly can in The complex ways we remember…
their unique environment.
There are three main types of memory:
sensory, short-term and long-term, although
long-term is often split into different types of SENSORY MEMORY
memory. Sensory memory is a very short-term Sensory memory is evoked through the senses and is the initial
type of memory that is evoked through the perception of something. This is a fleeting memory and will not
senses. It lasts for a few seconds at most and is be transferred into short- or long-term unless we focus on
not stored.
Short-term memory is a slightly longer-
remembering the event.
lasting form – around 20 seconds. It’s the
recording of memories currently being used
– so, remembering a number to dial in the next SHORT-TERM
30 seconds. If the information is repeated, This type of memory is stored temporarily for up to 20 seconds.
however, it causes pathways to form between
It can, however, be confused with working memory, a separate type
neurons in the brain and a phrenological loop
to be created, causing a memory to be stored of memory that allows an individual to retain information only for
as a long-term memory. Unless this repeated long enough to, say, complete a sum. Unless information is
firing of the neurons occurs, which is forced by repeated several times to establish a pathway between neurons, it
repeating the information, a memory is lost. will decay and be lost.
When we cannot remember something,
it’s generally not because of developing a
degenerating brain disease like Alzheimer’s –
it’s far more likely to be that the correct stimuli LONG-TERM – PROCEDURAL (IMPLICIT)
have not been presented to prompt retrieval This kind of long-term memory is how we remember to do things
of the memory, or that you did not register or such as ride a bike. It is where we store our ‘body’ memories –
retain the original information properly. For our motor skills.
example, if you cannot remember where you
put your shoes when you took them off, it
may be that you were not paying attention
when you put them down and consequently LONG-TERM – DECLARATIVE (EXPLICIT)
have not transferred the memory from short- This type of memory is how we store facts for retrieval, and consists of
term to long-term in the first place, rather than things such as names and dates.
having forgotten.
As long as you have registered and retained
the event, correct stimuli would cause a refiring
of the neurons when creating the original LONG-TERM – EPISODIC
memory, allowing successful retrieval of the This is where we store event-related memories and link them together.
information required. Dependent on its type, a For example, if you went to a dinner party you wouldn’t remember
memory is stored in different areas of the brain. every moment, but you would recall a collection of events, smells and
This helps people to store related information
sounds that link together when you think of the overall event.
more easily, as it can be linked to previously
stored related material.

0.5 10 2
secs- mins years
10 mins -2 years +

WORKING MEMORY HIPPOCAMPAL CONSOLIDATION

Working memory is when information is PROCESSING If you use a piece of information repeatedly, the links
briefly stored in order to be used in the If we need to retain a piece of information, between the neurons remain strong. These are likely
© Shutterstock / GoodStudio

immediate future. It lasts for a few
seconds or so, but if repetition occurs,
refreshing the time limit in which it can
survive, it will be retained and can move
into short- or long-term.
or it particularly strikes us, it will travel
from the short-term memory, based
in the pre-frontal cortex, then to the
hippocampus, where it is processed and
can move into the long-term memory.
to stay in place for a long time. Although the pathways
between neurons are changing as we receive, process
and retain new information, repetition and reuse can
cause the pathways to remain and the memory to stay
in the brain.

PSYCHOLOGY NOW 31
 5 MEMORY MYTH BUSTERS

MYTH BUSTERS
5
Our memories of experiences, sensations and
emotions play a huge role in our future behaviours,
but they can often be misunderstood. We’re here to
debunk some of the most common memory myths

WORDS JULIE BASSETT

1 2
Memories are accurate
Our memory is by no means perfect. The way we
remember things is heavily shaped by our environment,
our influences, our beliefs and our interpretation of a
particular situation. The brain is not like a video recorder,
accurately and constantly recording events around us, and we’re not
able to ‘rewind the tape’ to replay things we’ve seen. We can learn a
lot from our memories, or – more accurately – the way we remember
things. They can tell us a lot about ourselves if we’re open to exploring
our own minds. We also need to remember that our memories might
be biased by our own thoughts and feelings, and not always reflective
of what actually happened.
Memories don’t change
Many people believe that once we have formed
a memory, it will stay the same throughout our
lifetime. However, this is not the case. There are
a lot of different parts of our brains that work to
form memories – it’s not a simple, linear process. We form
emotional memories as well as factual ones. Over time, we
might recall these memories and approach them from a
new perspective, which might in turn shape a new version
or interpretation of the memory. What’s more, when we tell
a story many times, we might embellish or add extra details,
which over time become part of the memory.

32 PSYCHOLOGY NOW

3
You can have a
photographic
memory
We probably all know of
someone who has what we
would consider to be a ‘photographic’
memory – these individuals are seemingly
able to easily recall information they have
seen visually in great detail. But the brain is
not a camera; the term photographic memory
suggests that we can snapshot things we
want to remember, file the mental pictures
away and recall them whenever we like.
Some people do have exceptional memories,
and many others have taught themselves
tricks for remembering and recalling things.
There is such a thing as an ‘eidetic memory’,
which is often used interchangeably with
‘photographic memory’, but they are subtly
different. People with eidetic memories can
recall an image after only seeing it briefly
once and remember its details, by way of a
lingering ‘after image’. It is typically only seen
in children and rarely in adults.
PSYCHOLOGY NOW
5 MEMORY MYTH BUSTERS
Doing puzzles
4
will improve
your memory
Well, they can a bit, but only
within context. If you do a lot
of crosswords, for example, you’ll likely
start to use your memory to solve them
more quickly over time. Puzzles are a good
way of keeping the brain active, but they
may not help boost your overall memory.
There are other things that do help though,
such as exercise, which requires you to
remember and learn a series of movements
in order to perform particular actions. It
can also increase blood flow to your brain,
which can help with memory function. A
balanced, healthy diet will also help to keep
your memory in peak condition.
5
Constant
study improves
performance
When it comes to studying
for a test, interview or big
presentation, the temptation is to spend
long hours reading over facts and figures,
frantically trying to commit them to
memory. While repetition can help, it is a
myth to assume that the more time and
effort you put in, the better you will do.
Your brain needs undisturbed rest periods,
© Getty Images / VectorMine
and you may find that you actually recall
information better after a rest than during
the period of intense study. It does need to
be rest with no interference though – so put
your phone away, turn off the television and
close the curtains to relax.
33

NURTURE
DEBATE
The oldest and often the bitterest
debate in psychology continues
into the 21st century
hat makes us what we
W are? This question has
occupied minds and
stirred up debate for
centuries and, in the
21st century, the controversy shows no signs
of abating, although it may be getting a little
nearer to being resolved. But to understand
the question, let’s first look at what is meant
by ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’.
Nature
According to the Greeks, it was the four
humours that determined our nature.
While the idea of the four humours slowly
became discredited, the idea of inherent
factors determining human personality and
behaviour were being developed in other
34
THE NATURE VS NURTURE DEBATE
THE
VS
WORDS EDOARDO ALBERT
areas of philosophy and science. Going back
to the fountainhead of philosophy himself,
Plato, the Greek thinker argued that human
beings are born with certain innate ideas
that enable us to recognise the eternal Forms
behind all things. Moving forward, the great
scientist and philosopher René Descartes
also argued that we are born with innate
knowledge, but that this knowledge might
require an experience to uncover it, in the
same way that a predisposition to a particular
disease would still require a trigger. These
philosophical ideas gained greater weight
with the belated appreciation of Mendel’s
work on inheritance and how this provided a
mechanism for Darwin’s theory of evolution
to actually be passed on from one generation
to another. With the development of the
science of genetics and Crick and Watson’s
discovery of the double helix structure of
DNA, there was further evidence for the
mechanisms of inheritance and how they
could affect us as individuals. With the
completion of the Human Genome Project, it
might have seemed that the debate was over
and Mother Nature had definitively shown
herself to be the mother of our personalities
and behaviours. But it turned out not to be as
simple as that.
Nurture
The usual name associated with the idea that
human beings are born a blank slate, a tabula
rasa, upon which experience and upbringing
gets to work, making the newborn into the
result of their rearing, is the philosopher John
PSYCHOLOGY NOW

Locke in his An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding, which first appeared in 1689.
However, there is a far older strand of human
thought that also sought to change human
nature. This was magic, in all its various
forms. Magic actually stood in contradiction
to astrology, which fixed human destiny
in the stars. Magicians, on the other hand,
sought to change and master destiny.
So while the names might change, the
underlying human predispositions have not.
On the one side, ‘nature’ or ‘fate’ or ‘the stars’
or our ‘DNA’; on the other ‘magic’, ‘society’,
the ‘environment, upbringing and culture’.
Magicians were the rivals of astrologers, not
their colleagues, for they believed that they
could master fate by their spells. This belief
reached its zenith in the scholar magicians
of the Renaissance: men such as John Dee,
Paracelsus and Marsilio Ficino. With science
still in its infancy, many of the best minds of
the century thought to come to dominance,
over nature and the self, through the use of
magic, thus making humans into something
malleable, something that could be formed
by the will rather than subject to the
unalterable effects of the fixed stars. The idea
of human freedom grew stronger through
the revolutions of the 18th century, but
then ran up against the dominant scientific
theory of the 19th century: evolution. Darwin
had, apparently definitively, disproved the
alternative version of evolution, known as
Lamarckism, that allowed a role for inherited
characteristics. The Darwinian version of
evolution permitted only natal characteristics
to determine an individual’s fitness to survive.
But despite this setback, the first half of
the 20th century saw the idea of human
beings as blank slates determined by their
PSYCHOLOGY NOW
THE NATURE VS NURTURE DEBATE
environment establish itself as the dominant
paradigm in psychology as behaviourism
and psychoanalysis became the dominant
psychological schools of the period.
Bruce or Brenda
The nature versus nurture debate may
sound like a dry discussion best suited for
the academic journals, but the answers to
the question of what makes us what we are,
when applied to the real world of people, can
have tragic, life-destroying consequences,
none more so than in the case of one David
Reimer. Only David Reimer was not born
alone: he was the elder of identical twins,
and his younger brother was named Brian.
The twins’ parents, Janet and Ron Reimer,
were young people who had grown up on
farms with little experience of life outside
Winnipeg in Canada. They named the elder
of their twins Bruce. But when their little
boys appeared to have difficulty urinating,
their doctor recommended that they be
circumcised. Still only seven months old, the
young couple took their boys to St Boniface
Hospital, driving through a snowstorm to get
there. However,
the storm had
prevented the
surgeon getting
to the hospital.
Rather than send
them home again,
an assistant surgeon
started what was supposed
to be a routine procedure,
using an electric cauterising
machine rather than the usual scalpel.
But, tragically, the machine malfunctioned,
burning off David’s penis. Brian, not
surprisingly, was spared the operation.
With their little boy mutilated, the Reimers
happened to catch a TV programme
featuring the work of renowned psychologist
Doctor John Money, a New Zealander who
now practiced at Johns Hopkins University,
where he led the Psychohormonal Research
Unit. Money was the leading proponent of
the view that gender was not innate but
rather developed as a result of social factors
and upbringing, a view that he had come to
as a result of his work with intersex children.
35

At a loss at what to do to help their son, the
Reimers wrote to Doctor Money who wrote
back immediately, inviting them to his clinic.
Give me a boy and I will make him a girl
Little did the Reimers know that they were
presenting Doctor Money with a once-in-
a-lifetime opportunity to prove his views
of gender fluidity: that nurture determined
gender rather than nature. For having a set
of identical twins meant that the Reimers
could provide a control for what Doctor
Money advised them to do: let him turn little
Bruce into little Brenda. With the children
sharing parents, environment and genetic
makeup, the only variable would be the
social influence working on Bruce to make
him Brenda. There was a surgical element
involved too. At 22 months, Bruce’s testicles
were removed and plastic surgeons made a
vulva for him. Bruce was now Brenda, and
Janet and Ron Reimer, following Doctor
Money’s advice, dutifully set about raising
their new little girl as a girl.
The family made annual visits to Doctor
Money’s laboratory where he monitored
the progress of his experiment. Under the
name ‘John/Joan’, the case was written up
and presented as triumphant confirmation
that, indeed, gender was a social construct
rather than anything inherent: the triumph of
nurture over nature. But for Brenda, it was not
the case was presented as
confirmation that gender was
a social construct
36
THE NATURE VS NURTURE DEBATE
UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR
In five years, children go from babbling to being fluent in the
language of their parents and they do so without explicit instruction
in grammar or syntax or anything much at all beyond ga-ga sounds
from delighted parents. To explain this, the linguist Noam Chomsky
proposed that every human being is born with an innate ability to
learn language and that there is a universal grammar of structural
rules within our minds that predispose us to learn particular
languages as babies and children. While still subject to criticism,
particularly on grounds of whether a universal grammar is detectable
behind the varieties of different languages, Chomsky’s ideas have
been hugely influential.
so clear-cut. While photos show little Brenda insisted, on Doctor Money’s instructions,
in dresses and with long hair, ‘she’ found that she was a girl. For the Reimers, the strain
herself an outcast: preferring her brother’s toy proved intolerable: Janet attempted suicide,
trucks over the dolls she was presented with; and Ron became an alcoholic.
bullied by the other girls at her school, in part According to David’s later account
because she would try to urinate standing (although this is denied by Doctor Money’s
up; and part of a family in which her parents defenders), there was a darker element to
these annual visits to Doctor Money’s clinic.
Still in awe of the world-famous psychologist,
the Reimers allowed him to make their
children take part in sexual rehearsal play
– all a necessary part of sexual maturation
according to Doctor Money.
But for Brenda, growing up only
exacerbated her alienation. She attempted
suicide and was under psychiatric care. In
the end, aged 14, her psychiatrist persuaded
Brenda’s parents to tell their daughter that she
had been born to them a son. The news came
as a revelation. Brenda took her dresses from
the wardrobe, covered them with petrol and
burned them. But becoming male again was
a difficult and painful task. Oestrogen had
given Brenda breasts: she required a double
mastectomy to remove them. Testosterone
injections – because Brenda’s testicles had
been removed – helped to masculinise him,
and surgeons worked to create an artificial
penis for him. It took five years for the surgery
to be completed, during which time Brenda
changed his name to David.
Although David did marry, adopting the
three children of his spouse, the scars of
his upbringing lingered. Brian, his twin, had
slipped into drug use, crime and depression.
David’s case came to public view in the late
1990s, by which time Doctor Money was
suffering from Parkinson’s disease. However,
in 2002, Brian, David’s twin, committed
suicide. Two years later, David’s wife of 14
PSYCHOLOGY NOW

years asked for a separation. On 4 May 2004,
David Reimer took a shotgun from his house,
sawed down the barrel and shot himself.
Doctor John Money died two years later.
The politics of nature and nurture
For David Reimer, the question of whether
nature or nurture determines what we are
had been deadly personal. It remains a
hugely fraught area of research, for it feeds
into so many ideas of what we are. If we are
taken to be the products of our birth, then
socially and politically this tends to lead to
arguments for maintaining the status quo:
people are born with aptitudes and abilities
and there is not that much that can be
done to change these. Most controversially,
inheritance was tied to intelligence, starting in
the 1920s when the eugenics movement was
at its height. According to this view, there are
differences in average intelligence between
the various human races; the finding that
was most publicised by the early eugenicists
was that black people tended to score lower
WHAT
MAKES
YOU HAPPY
Genomic sequencing and twin
studies have led scientists
to investigate whether it is
our genetic makeup or our
environment that makes us
happy – and the answer seems
to be that happiness is roughly
half down to our environment
(such as a happy marriage, a
fulfilling career, good health and
the other usual aspects of the
good life), and half down to a
genetic predisposition towards
happiness and fulfilment. So
it would be possible to have
everything and still be miserable
and, conversely, to have nothing
and be profoundly happy. Of
course, with most people, the
actual reality lies somewhere in
the middle.
PSYCHOLOGY NOW
THE NATURE VS NURTURE DEBATE
on IQ tests than white people (that Asians
scored more highly than both groups was
largely ignored). In 1969, the psychologist
Arthur Jensen published a paper in the
Harvard Educational Review that argued that
the variance in IQ between white and African
Americans was 80% due to genetic factors,
with only 20% the result of the environment
and culture in which the children had been
raised. In other words, African Americans
were less intelligent, on average, because
they were born that way and, as the title of
his paper asked – ‘How Much can we Boost
IQ and Scholastic Achievement?’ – Jensen’s
answer was: not that much. Thus the end
point of the nature school has the tendency
to shade into outlooks that border on racist.
But what about the implications of
those who believe that we are what we are
because of our environments and the way
we are brought up? Surely that won’t be so
problematic? Sadly it is. This idea of human
nature, which goes back to the philosopher
John Locke who argued in his An Essay
Concerning Human Understanding that
a human being is born as a tabula rasa, a
blank slate, tends to lend itself to those most
committed to remaking human society
into some other, idealised state without
much thought as to the consequences.
Poor David Reimer was one casualty of
this viewpoint – a boy sacrificed to prove
a scientist’s hypothesis – but there have
been far more catastrophic experiments in
social engineering carried out in the name
of making a perfect human society, from Pol
Pot’s Year Zero in Cambodia to the Cultural
Revolution in China. So it is clear that this
question as to what makes us what we are is
a crucial one.
But what does make us what we are? After
a century of scientific study, are we actually
any closer to disentangling the twisted skeins
of inheritance and environment? In some
ways, yes.
Strange bedfellows: behaviourism
and psychoanalysis
The first half of the 20th century saw the
belief that environment was the key influence
in human development reign supreme in
psychology as a result of the dominance
of the field by two schools of thought –
behaviourism and psychoanalysis – that
were in most respects opposed but which did
agree on this big question: our environment
makes us what we are. Behaviourism, which
was invented by John Watson and developed
by BF Skinner, sought to understand human
beings by, precisely, their behaviour; that
behaviour being determined by the sort
of stimulus-response conditioning first
demonstrated by Ivan Pavlov. When feeding
his laboratory dogs, Pavlov always rang a
bell before giving the dogs their food. Soon,
Pavlov found that simply ringing the bell
was enough to stimulate a salivary response
in his dogs. Indeed, Watson went so far as
to state: “Give me a dozen healthy infants,
well-formed, and my own specified world to
bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take
any one at random and train him to become
any type of specialist I might select – doctor,
lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even
beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents,
penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations,
and race of his ancestors.”
Psychoanalysis was the other main school
of psychological thought of the first half
of the 20th century. Sigmund Freud, the
founder of psychoanalysis, thought the origin
of many later-life neuroses to lie in childhood
traumas or the failure to complete the stages
of psychosexual development – oral, anal,
phallic, latent and genital – that were, in his
view, necessary for human flourishing. So
again, the childhood environment was the
determinative influence on the adult human
being: nurture all the way.
This view of human learning received
further reinforcement in the Bobo Doll
experiments carried out by Albert Bandura
in 1961 and 1963. In the experiment, young
children aged between three and five
observed an adult interacting with a large
inflatable Bobo Doll (basically a blow-up
Mr Blobby). In one scenario, the adult hit or
abused the Bobo Doll, in the other the adult
ignored the doll completely and played with
other toys in the room. The child was, after
a short hiatus, then allowed to play with the
Bobo Doll and other toys in the room. Where
the child had seen the adult hit or abuse the
Bobo Doll, there was a marked tendency
for the child to mimic this behaviour.
There was a marked gender difference too,
with boys far more likely than girls to act
aggressively towards the Bobo Doll. For
Bandura, this was evidence for his theory that
children learn by observation as well as the
operant conditioning demonstrated by the
behaviourists. It also added further evidence
to the view that children were largely formed
by their environments when growing up.
The gene genie
However, by the 1970s, new work on genetics
and twin studies began to call this primary
emphasis on the environment into question.
Many of the studies were controversial,
precisely because of the implications a
view of human beings as determined by
their genes rather than their environment
would have. However, twin studies, the
Human Genome Project and comparative
anthropological studies began to suggest
both the heritability of many features and
even the existence of cultural universals.
Twin studies were particularly important
to start with, because identical twins share
37
 THE NATURE VS NURTURE DEBATE

it is clear
this question THE FOUR HUMOURS
as to what
makes us what Good old Mother Nature’s influence on her children has gone under

we are is a a number of different names during human history. The first was the
mixture of the four humours – blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black

crucial one bile – that, according to the Greek physician Galen, determined our
personalities, with traces of this belief still contained in the meaning
of words derived from these humours. A sanguine temperament,
produced by a preponderance of the blood humour, is confident and
the same genetic makeup, whereas fraternal optimistic, whereas someone who is phlegmatic is stolid and slow
twins, although sharing the same uterine through his or her excess of phlegm. However, this theory did allow
environment and upbringing, have the doctors to correct imbalances in a patient’s humours by prescribing
same genetic relation as ordinary siblings. food and treatments for the opposite, lacking humour, so that an
Thus if inheritance is more important than excess of blood could be cured by blood letting or eating earthy, cold
environment, there should be little difference
in similarity between identical and fraternal
foods. Nature’s natal influence was extended through astrology, with
twins. On the other hand, if genes are more the precise location of the planets and constellations at birth being
important than upbringing, identical twins supposed to determine the personality and fortune of the newborn
should be significantly more similar than child. The belief was, and remains, hugely influential, and as such is
fraternal twins. This latter proves to be the almost the purest example of the idea that what we are and what
case, although the degree of similarity varies
we become is determined by factors surrounding our birth that are
from very high – basic physical traits such
as height and eye colour – to medium in the outside our control.
case of personality traits and intelligence.
So clearly, genetic inheritance plays an
important role in making twins what they are,
be that identical or fraternal siblings.
With genetic studies becoming easier, and
cheaper, to carry out from the 1990s onwards,
it swiftly became clear that the extreme view
of newborn babies as blank slates that had
been championed by the likes of Watson and
Money was untenable. In particular, studies
STERILISING THE UNFIT
on adoptive children showed unequivocally
that these children showed more similarities
to their birth parents than they did to their
adopted parents. Francis Galton (1822-1911), a relative of Charles Darwin, developed
But while it was clear that genetic
inheritance played a large part in determining
his theory of eugenics after reading Darwin’s work. Convinced that
what a person would become, it was clear humanity would decline without selective breeding, Galton and the
that the most determined aspects of a person generation of eugenicists that followed him popularised the idea
were their physical characteristics: height, that human progress depended on the selective, and encouraged
hair and eye colour, and so on. This was not, reproduction of people with good traits and the discouragement or
and never had been, controversial. What
sterilisation of people with bad or undesirable traits. Assent to this
was also slowly becoming clear was that
there was an interplay between genetic and sterilisation was not always asked for or required. The idea became
environmental factors in the working out of popular worldwide in the early 20th century, with many of the most
many of the more complex characteristics progressive minds of the time, from Marie Stopes to George Bernard
in people. Take autism as an example. This Shaw, becoming enthusiastic advocates. Indeed, Stopes argued that
complex developmental disorder has a the products of any mixed-race unions should be sterilised to ensure
strong genetic component shown by the
fact that, among identical twins, if one twin
that they could not pass on their miscegenation. If it was not for the
has autism, then the likelihood of the other opening of the gates to Auschwitz in 1945 and the realisation of the
sibling also being autistic is around 75%, ultimate destination of the eugenics road, it would likely have gone
whereas for fraternal twins the chance is on being an article of faith of the progressive left.
around 30% and for ordinary siblings about
20%. If autism was completely genetically

38 PSYCHOLOGY NOW
 THE NATURE VS NURTURE DEBATE

determined, then there would be 100%

correlation between identical twins, so other
factors account for about a quarter of the
likelihood of being autistic.

The waltz of inheritance

and environment
One example of how a genetic cause requires
environmental stimulation to manifest itself
is perfect pitch. This is the ability to hear
a musical note and tell immediately what
that note is without any reference note.
Perfect pitch has a strong tendency to run
in families, indicating that it has a genetic
component, and indeed scientists think it
may be triggered by a single gene. However,
what is interesting is that the gene itself is not
enough: to develop perfect pitch, a child –
even though he or she possesses the gene for
perfect pitch – needs to be trained in music
while still young. Even at the most obviously
physical level, that of height, it’s nevertheless
true that a child born to a long line of tall
parents will still exhibit stunted growth if
malnourished when growing up.
Perhaps the most striking, and certainly
the most universal, example of this interplay
between genetic inheritance and learned
behaviour is speech. Children are born with
an innate predisposition to speak. This is
species-specific to us as human beings: raise a
chimpanzee alongside a baby, talking to both
of them, and the baby will be fluent by the
time he or she is five while the chimpanzee
will not be. While there is an inherited,
although vastly complex, predisposition to
speech, the particular language the child
learns to speak is obviously determined
by the environment: while we are all wired
to talk, what we actually say depends
on what we hear. Furthermore, there is a
developmental window in which language
acquisition must take place. In cases where
children have been raised in isolation, or
even among animals, it seems that if the child
has not learned language by eight then he or
she will never develop a full linguistic range:
in the worst cases, he or she will only be able
to say one or two words. there are some studies that even suggest predisposition that causes different neural
This developing understanding of the certain genetic types are more likely to occur pathways to form in the brain, leading to
interplay between genetics and environment in matching environments. Consider a youth the eventual referral to a psychologist. The
– the dance of nature and nurture rather who is referred to a psychologist because positive side of this negative feedback loop
than their opposition – has begun to render of problems he or she has in controlling his is that it can be stopped and even reversed.
the old extreme viewpoints obsolete. It is or her aggression. It’s likely that he or she New research in the area of neuroplasticity
now quite clear that our genetic inheritance might have been born with a predisposition in the brain is showing that neural structures
directly influences us at a multitude of levels, to aggression inherited from his or her are not fixed, as was once thought. Instead,
from the physical, through the psychological parents. But as a child, the expression of that new pathways can form and old pathways
and on to the behavioural. However, what is predisposition produced push back from his be broken. Thus the rigid prison of
also clear is that how these genes express or her parents and siblings, and then later inheritance and the blank scribble plate
themselves, and the degree to which they from his or her teachers and classmates. of the tabula rasa are both malleable and
© Getty Images / Irina_Qiwi

express themselves, is a result of a complex
interaction with environmental and social
factors. So the contest of nature against
nurture is becoming a search for the ways in
which the two influence each other. In fact,
The child’s slightly above average tendency
towards aggression is matched and raised
by the response of those around him or
her, so he or she doubles down, forming a
feedback loop building on his or her natural
subject to change. We are, it turns out,
prisoners neither of our birth nor of our
upbringing. And this is surely the most
heartening message to be taken from the
new science of nature and nurture.

PSYCHOLOGY NOW 39
 WHY DO WE LIE?
WHY
DO WE
It’s not just bad behaviour
– deception is a product of
evolution and it gives your
brain a real workout
WORDS CHARLIE EVANS
our dog really did eat your
Y homework, and you have no
idea who took the last biscuit
from the sweet jar. Lying
is in your nature, but don’t
worry – it’s in the nature of most humans. It’s
a technique that has evolved over billions of
years, so it turns out you might not actually
have that much to feel bad about.
Humans are social creatures, and we
have our giant brains to thank for this.
They evolved to be so large because we
needed the extra space to be successful at
communicating with others and keeping
our social group happy. This has a lot of
advantages. If you can
build bonds with other
humans you can access
more resources because
your friends and family will share
food and shelter, helping you out when you
need it. But to keep these close connections,
40
sometimes we need to lie. Throughout
hominid history, it has been a genetic
advantage to be a good liar, as it supports
social bonds, and therefore you are more
likely to survive and pass on your genes.
Bending the truth, playing fast and loose with
the facts, telling a tall tale – whatever you call
it, lying is something that most individuals in
our species find really easy.
Although deception is frowned upon by
society, it actually evolved as a way to fine-
tune our social skills and strengthen our
relationships. Have you ever told a friend that
you really loved the dinner they had cooked
for you? Or maybe you have lied to your
mum about accidentally breaking something
in the kitchen? That’s these evolutionary
mechanisms kicking in, and whether it was
to protect your reputation or just avoid
upsetting someone, it probably worked well
to protect your relationships (if you didn’t get
caught, that is).
PSYCHOLOGY NOW
 WHY DO WE LIE?

We’re not
the only PATHOLOGICAL LIARS
species that
has developed Pathological lying is a term that refers to the act of lying so naturally

deceptive and instinctively that the individual finds it easier than telling the
truth. Sometimes they can even believe their own lies. It is a condition

tactics that can be damaging to the lives of the sufferer as it destroys

careers and relationships.
Neurologists have discovered that there are physiological differences
in the brains of pathological liars, who have 22 to 26% more
Your brain on lies
Lying is a creative task, and it’s much harder
prefrontal white matter and approximately 14% less grey matter. It’s
for our brains than just telling the truth, as thought that this difference means pathological liars are more able to
it requires remembering lots of different make connections between different memories and ideas. However, it
information to keep the story consistent. is unknown if the increased white matter is the cause of pathological
Even more complicated is our ability to lie to lying or if the practice of frequently lying can cause structural
ourselves, an extreme level of deception that
changes in the brain.
requires keeping two pieces of information in
our heads and ignoring one.
Whatever reason you are lying, and
however complex the lie, there are three of history, we have relied on our observation
main parts of the brain that you use when and social skills. We learnt how to monitor
you are being deceptive: the anterior other people’s behaviours for signs they
cingulate cortex, which is responsible for were not telling us the truth: unusual eye
monitoring errors; the dorsolateral prefrontal contact, signs they might be sweating more,
cortex, which controls behaviour; and the elaborating on a story with details that just
parietal cortex, which processes information don’t sound believable, and so on. As our
from your senses. These parts become more ability to lie evolved, so did our ability to
active when lying, and they can be seen detect a lie. This has come in helpful, as not
using functional MRI scanners – a far more every lie is told because we want to keep
advanced version of a lie detector. our friends. Sometimes lying is used to
However, we’ve not always had the manipulate others for personal gains, such
technology to help us detect a liar. For most as scamming people out of money. Being

LYING IS A MATTER
OF AGE – HONESTLY!
While our tendency to lie peaks in our teens, we don’t all make for honest adults

These lighter sections 10% The percentages in the

are the percentages of 11% darker sections are those
%
people telling one to 34 % people who told more than
39 9%
five lies a day. 45% five lies in a single day.
59%
14% 15%
43%
7%
%
29

Lying frequency by age

(over a 24-hour period)
Ages 60–77
45–59
18–44
13–17
9–12
6–8

No lies told.

PSYCHOLOGY NOW 41
 WHY DO WE LIE?

able to detect a lie is helpful for keeping our

resources safe from dishonest people.

Lying is not unique to humans

We’re not the only species that has developed
HOW TO CATCH A LIE
deceptive tactics. The skill has been mastered
throughout the animal world, notably
by tufted capuchin monkeys, which will
shout out false alarms to scare away older It’s all in the body language
individuals from food, and the polka-dot
wasp moth, which mimics the same clicks of
the bad-tasting delicate cycnia moth to ward
off predators. These animals developed these INTENSE EYE CONTACT
tactics to protect themselves rather than Eye contact usually suggests honesty, and it is tempting for someone
strengthen social bonds. telling a lie to break eye contact. As a result, they will start making
more eye contact than usual to overcompensate.

WHEN DO CONTRARY CONFIRMATION

WE LEARN Informal language and phrases that express they are being honest
(such as ‘believe me’ or ‘to be totally honest’) hints that someone
TO LIE? might not be telling the truth.

It’s thought that we learn how

FROZEN UPPER BODY
People tend to move less when they are being deceptive, gesturing
to lie much younger than we
with their hands less frequently and sometimes completely freezing
probably think, with some
their entire upper body.
research suggesting it may have
begun as early as six months old.
Over the years, we perfect the art,
and some estimates suggest by
the time we are in college we may
PROLONGED EYE CLOSING
Usually, people will blink for between 0.10 to 0.40 of a second, but
be lying to our mothers once every
when someone lies they often have their eyes closed for longer
five interactions.
than a second.
The developmental model of lying
was first proposed by researchers
Victoria Talwar and Kang Lee.
Their work shows that children
between the ages of two and
HEAD SHAKING
If someone says ‘yes’ but they shake their head ‘no’ at the same time,
three start telling primary lies
their body language might be giving away the real answer.
– basic deceptions to cover up
mistakes or bad behaviour – but
without considering whether the
listener will actually believe the lie.
Around the age of four, children
start to tell secondary lies, more
It is unknown if the
crafted and complex lies that are
more believable. By age seven or
increased white matter is the
eight, children start telling tertiary cause of pathological lying or
lies, using consistent facts and
follow-up statements. This is an if the practice of frequently
ability that will stay with them for
the rest of their lives. lying can cause structural
changes in the brain
42 PSYCHOLOGY NOW
 WHY DO WE LIE?

THE TRUTH BEHIND OUR LIES

There are many reasons why we try to deceive others

TO AVOID PUNISHMENT FOR ECONOMIC ADVANTAGE

We have broken the law, made a mistake or There is some financial reward, like a promotion or
committed a misdeed that we want to cover up. a pay rise that we will gain by telling this type of lie.

SOCIAL
AVOIDANCE
Some lies are told because
the individual wants to avoid
people, such as saying they
are sick or busy to get out of 16% FOR PERSONAL
a social event. 22% ADVANTAGE
We are seeking a
non-financial reward, such
as affection, attention or
LF higher social status.
SE

TO
UR

PR
YO

OM
TO P R OT EC T

OTE
15%

YO U R S E L
14%
F

TO GIVE A GOOD
IMPRESSION
We want to shape a
U
N positive image of ourselves
CL so lie about our character,
EA 8% saying we speak another
R language or that we’re an
I M PAC T O T H E R S excellent cook.
FOR REASONS 7%
UNKNOWN 5%
The motives for lying are
sometimes unclear even to
the person lying. 2%
4% 5%
2%

FOR HUMOUR’S SAKE

Some lies are told for the purpose
of making other people in our social
NO REAL REASON group laugh, such as exaggerating a
Pathological lying is a story or making up a funny
condition where an anecdote that did not happen.
individual compulsively lies
to excess, often serving
TO FIT IN
© Getty Images / myillo / dane_mark

little or no purpose.
Some deception comes
from a desire to uphold
MALICIOUS LYING social roles or avoid
Hurting other people by lying to them is being rude in an
attempt to fit in with ALTRUISTIC REASONS
known as malicious lying and serves to put We might lie selflessly for the benefit of other
other people down. This is sometimes done as the social group.
people, such as offering reassurance or
revenge or to cover the liar’s own insecurities. complimenting them to make them feel better.

PSYCHOLOGY NOW 43
 DECLUTTER YOUR LIFE

YOUR LIFE
Clutter can cause no end of stress whether it is physical
or mental; it makes the place look untidy, swallows
up space, and clouds your judgement, but there is a
wonderfully simple antidote: decluttering
44 PSYCHOLOGY NOW
 DECLUTTER YOUR LIFE

WORDS NATALIE DENTON & REBECCA LEWRY-GRAY

B
e it broken, unwanted, not of potential dust gatherers is endless, but
needed, outgrown or unloved, questioning who you are and what you want
there are probably many items to achieve will help you to bin or begin.
in your house you could do
without. Or things playing on Why should we declutter?
your mind, a hectic calendar or unworthy Think of decluttering like stripping away
friends. Simply put, clutter is mess; an untidy weeds that are blocking the light from
collection of things that haven’t been put flowers in your garden. With the weeds
away, aren’t needed, or don’t belong in the gone, the flowers have room and energy to
space they are currently occupying. Whether grow. Likewise, freeing yourself of unwanted
it’s dirty clothes piled on a chair, old toys possessions can be quite liberating. It
crammed into an overfilled cupboard, or reduces stress and anxiety, causing the
unopened mail strewn about a counter-top, brain to release endorphins that create an
clutter can amass all over your home like a
plague of unwelcome pests.
People lead busy lives and unless there’s
a reason to have a good clear out, such as Decluttering isn’t just a
moving house or trying to drum up some
extra cash, there’s no urgency or motivation way to tidy your home; it’s a
to declutter, which is why you end up with
too much stuff, a lot of which you no longer
need or want.
way to live your life
The key to beating clutter is to make
decisions – decisions about whether the
item should be kept or not, and if it is to be
saved, where it should live, or as Benjamin
Franklin once said: “a place for everything
MAKE IT FUN
and everything in its place.” Moving forward,
it’s essential the items you choose to keep are
returned immediately to their allotted space
when finished with. This sounds simple
enough, but for many people decluttering
FINDING THE MOTIVATION
can feel overwhelming, especially if you have Getting started can be one of the biggest hurdles when decluttering,
a lot of clutter to sort through. People fail to so it’s important to find the motivation to take that important first
tackle the problem because they don’t know step. Search apps like Pinterest for images of how you wish your
how or where to start. home to look, or cut out pictures from a home magazine and make a
vision board. Use these to see you through to the end.
How do we accumulate so much stuff?
Sentimentality is one of the biggest reasons
we hold on to things we might not need or
even want. Whether it’s a gift from a loved
one or a souvenir of your past, getting rid of BEFORE AND AFTER
possessions that hold significant emotional Once your place is looking shipshape, it can be hard to remember
value can be difficult and painful. But you
shouldn’t feel burdened to keep hold of all
what all the fuss was about, so why not take some ‘before’ shots
these things forever, and there are plenty before you start to later remind yourself of just how far you’ve come?
of techniques for helping you to deal with These can act as motivational tools to keep things tidy, plus they can
shedding the ones you no longer want. be uploaded with the ‘after’ shots to an online decluttering support
Stockpiling is another common cause of group to inspire others.
clutter. With shops riddled with offers and
multibuys, and advertisers pushing ‘just in
case’ purchases, it’s easy to end up with more
than you bargained for. Stocking up on things
you use regularly is good, but certain food, MANY HANDS MAKE LIGHT WORK
cosmetics, clothing and furnishings don’t Everyone knows a ‘Monica’, so why not invite them and some other
always stand the test of time. friends and family over for a decluttering party? Stick on some
Then there are the things we buy because
we believe that they’ll make us happy, often
pumping tunes, provide a few refreshments, and let the good times
in the belief that they will ‘better’ us in some roll. Your house will be spick and span in no time. You may even find
way. Known as ‘aspirational clutter’, these new homes for some of your unwanted belongings; much better than
items can lay dormant for years; exercise giving your helpers a goody bag.
machines, intellectual coffee table books,
sports equipment, camping gear… the list

PSYCHOLOGY NOW 45
 DECLUTTER YOUR LIFE

intoxicating rush of positivity that floods your and self worth, which will ultimately help We all have limited space in which to live,
body, urging you to do more. The wave of to improve your mental wellbeing. This can and often that space is shared with others.
good vibes doesn’t end there, as one person’s prompt you to clean other areas of clutter In order to live harmoniously you need
trash is another’s treasure. The warm and in your life, especially useful if you have a to respect one another, and part of that is
fuzzy feeling you get from donating your tendency to pile a lot on your plate. Through respecting the things people own.
unwanteds to charity can be exhilarating, or decluttering, you’ll begin to appreciate what While it might feel tempting to chuck
if you choose to sell your stuff you can put actually matters, and come to see the benefit away your spouse’s, children’s or flat mate’s
the money you make towards something that of quality over quantity, not just in terms of belongings for them, it is important that you
you actually want, another win-win. ‘stuff’, but also people and how you spend involve them in the decluttering process and
What’s more, clutter isn’t just a physical your time. Decluttering isn’t just a way to tidy allow them to choose for themselves what
issue. Clutter is the consequence of putting your home; it’s a way to live your life. possessions make them happy. Not only is
off dealing with things, and so emotional this ethically right, but if you want to keep the
clutter can accumulate just as quickly as Think about your values home in a tidy status quo moving forward,
worldly possessions. One of the main reasons Less clutter equals less chaos, which equates everyone who shares that space needs to
people have clutter is because they find it to less stress, greater calmness, clarity and believe in the same values as you, which are
hard to make a decision: keep or bin? Donate perspective. Not only will this do wonders for to only keep things that make you feel happy,
or sell? Where is the best place to keep it? your mental wellbeing and help to reduce to learn to appreciate what you have, and that
Sometimes it’s easier to do nothing. The risk of serious illnesses, but it can also every item you choose to cherish deserves
inability to make decisions can stem from improve your relationships and enhance its own spot where it now belongs.
self doubt and insecurity. Forcing yourself to your self-esteem. However, the only way this
make decisions, even small ones like these, can truly work is if everyone you share your Live your life by your chosen values
will help you to get better at making more living environment with, no matter how old Imagining how you want your life, your
important choices, building self confidence or young they are, is on the same page. home, and even yourself to be is one thing,
but making it happen is something else
entirely. The good news is that it can be done;
you just have to choose to make a start. For
some people, that means making a change.
DIG A LITTLE DEEPER To truly change, you not only have to want
to change, but believe that you’re capable of it.
Often the desire is there but the belief is not.
To combat this, you need to spend some time
working on improving how you see yourself
and in doing so, boost your self-esteem.
VISUAL REMINDER As is the case with decluttering, do this in
Make a list of all the values that are most important to you and small steps and take one thing at a time. Begin
your family then display them in whatever creative fashion takes by moving. Literally. Exercise, regardless of
your fancy. Alongside respect, consider: dedication, patience, how light or little, is proven to boost your
courtesy, gratitude, commitment, belief in others, forgiveness, mood and motivation. The more you do, the
better you’ll feel in your mind, as well as your
appreciation and togetherness.
body. Next up, really look after yourself. This
means drinking enough water, eating right,
and getting between seven and nine hours
of sleep a night. Spend less time online and
LEARN IT YOUNG
Sit down with your children one at a time and ask them to place all
their clothes in one pile. Tell them to hold an item and explain how it
makes them feel. They’ll soon learn, as you did, how to instinctively
Spend less
recognise what to keep and what to let go. Remember that you’re
there simply as an observer, you must respect their choices. It’s
time online and
important to be patient too; this is a new experience for them and
could take some time By encouraging your child to do this, it will help
living your life
to increase their confidence, decision-making and independence. virtually, and
more time in
LET THE BAD FEELINGS GO the real world
Just as it’s important to let go of physical things you don’t need, the
same is true emotionally. Emotions such as anger, resentment, guilt with people
and self-loathing take away from your happiness, so learn to let them
go. Just saying ‘I forgive you’, can really help. who matter
to you
46 PSYCHOLOGY NOW
 DECLUTTER YOUR LIFE

living your life virtually, and more time in the

real world with people who matter to you.
Put effort into the activities you enjoy, and
indulge in ‘me’ time without feeling guilty. The
more you do this, the more you’ll convince
BENEFITS OF
yourself you’re worthy of it and do deserve
good things. With your self-worth buoyed
you’ll begin to believe that you’re capable of
DECLUTTERING
achieving what you want, that you can cope
with change, that you can declutter your
home, and that you can live your life by the
values you believe to be important. By selling items, you can recoup some cash, which is more than
you had when the item was cluttering up your space. Try to imagine
What means the most to you? that you are paying a fee every month to store your junk; you’d
Often, day to day routines take up so much want to stop paying for this as soon as possible, especially as
of your time that it’s easy to forget what’s
actually important, from spending time with
you aren’t using the items.
loved ones to giving yourself some ‘me’ time. Regular decluttering makes cleaning your house easier, simply
because there are fewer things to move around. Decluttering also
makes you physically aware of your belongings – you have to
handle them to know whether to keep or dump. This means
you are less likely to buy multiples or replacements
LOOK AT because you know exactly what you have and also
where to find it.
YOURSELF Decluttering isn’t an all or nothing task; it is a
process that you may have to restart more
than once. This isn’t a reason to beat
yourself up or feel guilty. You’ve made a
start – keep at it!
BEING IS BELIEVING
What kind of person do you think
you are? If your answers are self-
deprecating ones such as, ‘I’m
bad at organising’, or ‘I’m useless’,
you must change how you view
yourself. To attain success you
need to believe you’re worthy of
success. Now, what kind of person
do you want to be? Then be that
person! The only person able to
stop you is you.

BELIEVE IN THE BUZZ

If you won’t listen to other people
that change is good, then listen
to your instincts. Notice that buzz
of satisfaction you have when
you get rid of something you no
longer need. It feels good, right?
That feeling means you’re doing
the right thing. Enjoy it, let it feed
your positivity and boost your
self-esteem. You’re good at this
and you’re changing for
the better.

PSYCHOLOGY NOW 47
 DECLUTTER YOUR LIFE

Accumulating possessions can mimic the

feeling those things can give you, that excited
buzz that makes you feel as though you’ve
achieved something. But you haven’t.
By really looking at your life, you can
determine what is actually important to
you, and hopefully you can begin to realise
that your possessions aren’t. Putting your
life in context will help you to gain some
perspective, which in turn encourages a more
positive mindset when getting rid of things
you no longer need.
Start by thinking about all the things
that give your life purpose: family, friends,
relationships, perhaps work or education,
maybe leisurely or energetic pursuits.
Imagine yourself in your old age looking
back on your life – what sort of experiences STAY STRONG
do you see yourself having? What are the
things you think you’d wish you’d done more
of, and those that might matter less? Perhaps
you long to travel or accomplish something
creative, like writing a book or composing a SEPARATE YOURSELF FROM OBJECTS
piece of music. Write all these things down You are not your possessions. Likewise, the things you own do not
and add to them when something new arises define your identity – you are still you without them. Don’t hang on to
or your tastes or lifestyle change. things just because you feel they ‘say’ something about who you are,
There’s no pressure to achieve these things
right now. Instead, set yourself some short-
and don’t do things that make you the person you want to be. Only
and long-term goals, but be realistic with how keep something if it makes you happy.
long things take. For now, though, concentrate
on getting your house in order. The last
thing you want to do before taking on a large
mission like decluttering is to pile on more
stress. The idea of the list is to use it to put
GET MOVING
your possessions into context. Once you’re If you’re stuck for ideas for your ‘most important’ list, get moving.
aware of what truly matters in your life, you Exercise can improve positivity and creativity, two things you’ll find
can begin shedding yourself of the things that essential when putting your life under a microscope. It doesn’t have
don’t. Then you’re free to spend all the time to be a five-kilometre bike ride or an hour-long iron pumping session –
you want on completing the rest of your list, even a brisk walk around the block will do the trick.
with ‘declutter home’ checked off.

Understand your needs

19th-century artist and designer William
Morris once said: “Have nothing in your
houses that you do not know to be useful,
or believe to be beautiful,” and the sentiment
is as true today as it was then. But unlike life
almost 200 years ago, mass production, the
internet and moderately disposable incomes
have meant you can acquire possessions
much easier and at a much faster rate than
your ancestors. Combine that with your
instinct to rejoice at gain and grieve loss,
and it’s no wonder you have a house full
of clutter.
Imagine for a second that your house
was on fire – what possessions would
you carry out to safety? Likewise, if you
were stranded on a desert island – what
items would you need to survive? These
hypotheticals may seem silly, but they can
actually offer an insight into what you deem
most important to you and therefore what
you really want to keep, as well as the things
you consider ‘essential’, and so need to keep.
NEW LEASE OF LIFE
If ditching your stuff is tearing you up inside, find a positive way
of letting it go. Try offering an item to a friend. Perhaps donate to
charity. Maybe you could repurpose or upcycle it into something you
or someone else might want. Or, why not sell it and use the money to
do something that’s on your list?
By extrapolating this thought process to the your answer: it has become a burden and
things you own will help you to declutter. is no longer important. Your happiness is
Hold each item and ask yourself ‘do I really much more important than an object. What’s
want or need this?’ ‘Is this important to me more, you don’t have to trash everything!
and my life?’ ‘Does this item make me happy?’ Sell what you can and use the money to buy
Be completely honest and you should something that is important instead, or better
have your answer immediately. If there’s still, spend it on a day out or a holiday with
a hesitation, it could be that you want to the most important people in your life.
say no, but something is holding you back;
perhaps guilt or reluctance for thinking about Dealing with guilt
discarding an item that holds sentimental or Our belongings, regardless of how long
monetary value. If this is the case, you have we have owned them, have emotions and

48 PSYCHOLOGY NOW
 DECLUTTER YOUR LIFE

Your memories may be triggered by an item

of clutter, but they are not attached by
an unbreakable bond; you won’t lose these
memories when you lose the item
When decluttering, try not to feel that ‘Someday’ items
ridding yourself of something is an affront to Do you find that you have held on to clutter

THE THREE the person who gave it to you, or that they

will find out and judge you.
because it may come in useful ‘someday’, or
because you may fit into a piece of clothing
one day? You very well may, this isn’t a set
‘C’S OF Unused gifts
Remember that the things you get rid of are
thing, but that doesn’t mean it’s worth holding
onto for the rest of your life. This is as true for

GETTING just things; they’re not the people you love

STUFF DONE
American psychologist Salvatore
Maddi said that the combination
of three attitudes (challenge,
control and commitment) can
help us to achieve things we
might not want to, or believe that
we can, do. First, challenge how
you view a stressful situation,
such as decluttering, and choose
to see it more as an opportunity
than a problem. Second, take
control of the situation – don’t
allow yourself to be swept along
without focus. Finally, commit to
the task and commit to change.
or the memories attached to them. Donating,
selling or gifting an item that you have
been gifted is not a rejection of the person
who gave it to you. Your memories may be
triggered by an item of clutter, but they are
not attached by an unbreakable bond; you
won’t lose these memories when you lose
the item.
As a counterpoint to your sensitivities,
consider this: the gift giver may have
forgotten they gave it to you. Take a moment
to try to remember the last few gifts you
gave them. The gift giver, most certainly,
wouldn’t want their gift to cause you worry.
So try to release these guilty feelings when
decluttering; they may be causing you more
stress than the actual thing!
LEARN TO LET GO
small things like pens and pencils as it is for
larger items that can be hired or borrowed,
such as specialist sporting equipment.
If you find yourself worrying about
changing your mind once you have thrown
something out, have a think about when
you last used the item, or wore the piece
of clothing. It may sound harsh, but if you
haven’t used it recently, you’re unlikely to
in the future. Instead, pass the item directly
onto someone who will use it, or donate it. If
this seems unthinkable, give yourself a timed
grace period. Box up the items and store them
out of sight, then set a reminder to decide on
the fate of the clutter within six months to a
year. If you haven’t gone searching for them
or can’t remember what they were, you don’t
need them. Absolve the guilt.

memories attached to them. We might feel
a combination of guilt, relief and worry
when decluttering.
Guilt comes in many ways and forms. It
is primarily an emotion but it isn’t a good
motivator. Annoyingly, there isn’t one root
cause for guilt, as with so many other
emotions. Guilt often occurs when we
believe, whether correctly or not, that we
have caused harm to another. Guilt can be
internally focused as well as external. We
SUNK COST
It’s difficult when decluttering to get past the feeling that you don’t
want to waste the money that you spent on an item. Remember the
money has already been spent. Sunk cost is what you’ve already
spent on the item and you don’t recoup when donating, dumping or
gifting it. Either use this as an incentive to start using the item or get
rid of it; you’re not going to get your money’s worth by not using it.
DON’T TURN OFF YOUR EMOTIONS
© Getty Images / Roi and Roi / Kupalina

feel guilt that we have wasted money, time There is nothing wrong with the sting of saying goodbye to an item,
and space on clutter that we should not have
bought in the first place, especially if we now
but don’t keep it from allowing you to let go of clutter. Often, things
view it as a non-essential. Be kind to yourself that were perfect for you, even not so long ago, may no longer work
and remember that the items we have in our for you. Ask yourself whether you would buy it again today precisely
home have had a purpose at one time or for this reason.
another, and we may have simply outgrown
their usefulness.

PSYCHOLOGY NOW 49
 IT’S A LAUGHING MATTER

IT’S A

MATTERPsychologists have discovered that laughter

is not what we think it is

WORDS EDOARDO ALBERT

id you hear the one about… opposed to being alone. Laughter is a social you will find yourself beginning to laugh

D However good (or bad) the

rest of that joke might be, the
one thing we know for sure
about laughter is that the
person hearing a joke is far, far more likely to
laugh if they are in the company of others, as
behaviour. It is infectious – just like yawning
– and is triggered by other people’s presence
and their laughter. In fact, try listening to
laughter. Just laughter, not the joke that
produced it or the pratfall, but just a genuine,
full-on belly laugh. It’s more than likely that
along in response.
But you won’t be the only one. Contra
Nietzsche, humans are not the only animals
that laugh. It has been observed in primates,
rats and many other mammals, associated
with the same sorts of behaviours that

50 PSYCHOLOGY NOW
 IT’S A LAUGHING MATTER

laughter is social: it
cements both the group
we are in, in addition to our
place in that group
produce laughter in people: tickling, play
and social interactions. It’s the last one that
is crucial for us: studies have shown that
people are 30 times more prone to laughter
in company than when on their own (which
also means that any book that can make
you laugh out loud must really be funny, as
reading is a solitary pursuit).
This conclusion about laughter being a
social behaviour has been established by
closely observing when people actually
do laugh as opposed to when they think
they laugh. Pose someone the question
‘When do you laugh?’, and they will likely
mention something about watching that bit
in Blackadder when Baldrick had a cunning
plan. Monitor that same person over a period
of a few weeks or months, and psychologists
have definitively found that the vast majority
of their laughter comes when they are
with friends, family or colleagues. In these
contexts, people laugh for all sorts of reasons,
but not often because something is actually
funny. Laughter is social: it cements both the
group we are in, in addition to our place in
that group.
There do, however, appear to be two
different sorts of laughter. There is the
involuntary laugh, where your sides start
hurting and your eyes water. This sort of
laughter is characterised by its length – it
can continue for longer than you think
you can bear, and the laugh contains major being more nasal, and for it being subject to
changes in pitch with a very high top note. voluntary control. People can stop this sort
On a physiological level, the intercostal of laughter but involuntary laughter can’t be
muscles that move the rib cage are acting stopped, even if your sides are aching, your
like rapid bellows, pushing air out of your eyes are streaming and you feel like your
lungs. And then there is more social laughter, chest might explode. Psychologists have
the sort of laugh people emit when they established that people are good at telling
want to acknowledge or accept something the difference between these two different
that has been said. This polite laughter is sorts of laughter. Among chimpanzees, there
characterised by less marked pitch changes, seems to be a similar split between these
types of laughter, between laughter
produced from tickling and that produced
by play.
However, the ability to distinguish between

FUNNY CAT VIDEOS these two sorts of laughter is something we

learn. A child cannot tell what is involuntary
and what is social laughter, and in fact the
HELP YOU WORK ability to distinguish the two is something
we work on through early adulthood, only
becoming secure and reaching a peak when
in our late 30s and early 40s. This fine-tuning
of the ability to understand laughter seems
The next time your boss catches you watching a funny cat video to be particularly relevant in happily married
couples. Studies have shown that couples
on YouTube when you should be working, you can tell them you’re with enduring, happy marriages use laughter
doing that so you can complete the tedious task they have set you as a way of dealing with the everyday
more quickly. Researchers have found that if a person prepares for stresses of married life. In fact, there is a direct
a boring and repetitive job by watching something funny, they will correlation between the reported happiness
persist with the task far longer than somebody who had previously of a marriage and the frequency of laughter
within it. So the couple that laughs together,
watched a calming or energising – but not humorous – video. In a study,
stays together.
researchers asked the subjects to do a taxing job, crossing out all the In an evolutionary context, it appears that
letters ‘e’ over two pages. They then either watched a Mr Bean video, laughter has developed in mammals and
a video of dolphins or one on management before being asked to do humans in order to create and maintain
a task that, unknown to them, was essentially undoable in which they the social groups that are necessary for us
needed ten correct sequential answers to win and which they could to thrive, and then when we are ensconced
within those groups it helps us to feel better
© Getty Images / CSA Images

stop at any time. The experimental subjects who had watched Mr Bean by providing a channel and outlet for many
stuck longer at the second task, making roughly twice the number of of the difficult emotions that are an inevitable
attempts before giving up. So those cat videos? An essential tool for consequence of living with other people. So
your productivity. yes, laughter is good for you and the people
around you. In fact, it’s one of the glues that
holds human societies together.

PSYCHOLOGY NOW 51
 THE BLIND EYE
THE
Do people really turn away when
someone cries for help? The
bystander effect suggests they do
WORDS EDOARDO ALBERT
I
t all began with a scream. At about
3.15am on 13 March 1964, Kitty
Genovese parked her red Fiat car in
the car park of the Kew Gardens Long
Island Railway Station in the borough
of Queens, New York. She had been working
double shifts at her bar job to save up money
to open an Italian restaurant. Her apartment
was about 100 yards from the car park. But
as she started on the walk from her car to the
entrance to her apartment block, she did not
know that she was being followed. Winston
Moseley, 29 years old and married with three
children, had woken at 2am and started
driving around the neighbourhood. He was
looking for a woman to kill.
The crime that shocked America
Moseley found one. He started following a
slim, young woman with dark hair. Spotting
Moseley, Genovese started running for her
apartment block, but Moseley caught up
with her and stabbed her twice in the back.
Genovese screamed that she was being
attacked and one neighbour, hearing the
call, yelled from his apartment for Moseley
to leave her alone. Moseley, disturbed by the
shouts, fled the scene. But then Genovese,
badly injured, tried to make her way to the
52
EYE
rear entrance of the apartment block, which
was out of sight of everyone. The door was
locked though, and she could not get in past
the hallway. Then Moseley returned and,
finding her, proceeded to stab Genovese
again before raping her and stealing $49. A
neighbour found Genovese and held her
until the ambulance arrived at 4.15am but
she died before the paramedics could get her
to hospital.
Winston Moseley was arrested six days
later and confessed to murdering Kitty
Genovese as well as two other women. He
was found guilty and, after an initial death
penalty, was commuted to life imprisonment.
He served the rest of his life in jail, apart from
four days in March 1968 when he escaped.
During this escape, he held a couple hostage
and raped the wife. Becoming eligible for
parole in 1984, Moseley presented himself
as just as much a victim of crime as those he
had murdered and raped, telling the parole
board: “For a victim outside, it’s a one-time
or one-hour or one-minute affair, but for
the person who’s caught, it’s forever.” The
parole board rejected Moseley’s application.
Moseley applied for parole 18 times, being
denied each time. He died on 28 March 2016
aged 81. He had served 52 years in prison.
PSYCHOLOGY NOW
 THE BLIND EYE

The brutal murder of Kitty Genovese was experiment involved splitting these students with unexpected, possibly emergency
reported on by that most august of American into two groups: the first group filled out the situations. According to the two psychologists,
newspapers, The New York Times. On 27 questionnaire alone in a room, while the the stages are:
March 1964, Times reporter Martin Gansberg second group did the questionnaire in a hall
filed a report detailing the brutal murder and with many other people who were also filling Notice that something is happening.
stating that 38 people heard or saw the attack out the questionnaire. However, these people –
but did nothing to stop it. An anonymous were actually confederates of Darley and Interpret what they see as an
quote in the story summed up, for a stunned Latané. While busy filling out the form, the emergency.
American public, the callous reality of living subjects noticed thick black smoke coming –
in a city such as New York. “I didn’t want to in to the room through the air conditioning, Assess what degree of responsibility
get involved.” The story became a sensation, swirling around until the room was heavy they have to act in this emergency.
passing rapidly into common knowledge. with smoke. But in the hall with Darley and –
Latané’s confederates, the confederates Decide what to do or what form of
Why didn’t they help? filling out the form acted as if the smoke assistance to render.
Among those who read the story were was of no consequence, blithely carrying on –
two social psychologists, John Darley and answering the questions. When alone in the Put that assistance into effect.
Bibb Latané. They set out to understand room, 75% of participants quickly left and
this phenomenon, conducting a series went looking to raise the alarm. But in the Darley and Latané therefore explained
of experiments that became classics of hall with lots of other people acting as if there the bystander effect that had taken place
social psychology and which have been was no problem, only 10% of the subjects in the tragic case of Kitty Genovese and
replicated many times over. Through these went looking for help, and even these took among their own experimental subjects
experiments, they investigated how likely twice as long to leave as those who, alone in a as being particularly relevant to stages two
people were to intervene in some sort of room, went searching for help. (An interesting and three. In the experiment where black
emergency situation where they adjusted the question that no one seems to have tackled is smoke filtered into a room filled with lots
number of other people present who were why 25% of people stayed in a room that was of other people, the experimental subject
also witnessing the apparent emergency. filling up with black smoke!) rapidly noticed the smoke but then, looking
In the first experiment, Darley and Latané
recruited university students to take part in The bystander effect explained
a study ostensibly about social interactions
in which the subject, alone in a room, put on
headphones to speak to other subjects in
To explain this behaviour, or lack of
behaviour, Darley and Latané developed a
series of stages for the cognitive processes
38 people
other rooms. They were told that they could
not see the other people in order to protect
that people undergo when they are faced heard or saw
anonymity. In the first group, the subject
thought they were having a one-on-one
the attack
conversation with one other person via the
intercom. In the second group, the subject but did nothing
thought he or she was speaking to two other
people. And in the third group, the subject
was told he or she was speaking with a group
to stop it
of five people. Then, during the conversation,
the person in the other room – in fact an
accomplice of Darley and Latané – pretended
to have a seizure, gasping and crying for
help. Darley and Latané found that 81% of the
first group subjects left the room to look for
help. In the second group, when the subject
thought they were speaking to two people,
64% went looking for help. And in the final
group, when the subject thought that he or
she was part of a group of five people, only
31% sought help. So it appeared that they had
found direct evidence that being part of a
larger group of people diffused the individual
sense of responsibility to act when someone
is in distress or danger. That was what the
newspaper had said had happened in the
murder of Kitty Genovese.
Darley and Latané delved deeper into
these findings by conducting a second
experiment to see whether being personally
at risk reduced this behaviour. They recruited
a fresh batch of university students who
were told they had to fill out a questionnaire
– which indeed they were given. But the real

PSYCHOLOGY NOW 53
 THE BLIND EYE

WHAT REALLY
HAPPENED THE NIGHT
KITTY GENOVESE WAS
MURDERED

The whole elaborate edifice of bystander effect theorising arose in response to

the shock and horror elicited by the report that a whole neighbourhood stood by
and did nothing while Kitty Genovese was murdered on the street, in plain view of
38 witnesses. The murder, and the lack of response from Genovese’s neighbours,
became emblematic of the atomised nature of American cities. After all, if The
New York Times, the most respected and respectable newspaper in the world,
said it, it must be true. Only it turns out that The New York Times was not as
infallible as it might seem. The first warning flag should have been the dateline
of the story. While Kitty Genovese was murdered on 13 March 1964, the Times
only ran the story, written by reporter Martin Gansberg, on 27 March, two weeks
later. The metropolitan editor of the Times, Abe Rosenthal, heard about the killing
while lunching with the New York City police commissioner Michael J Murphy, the
commissioner telling Rosenthal: “That Queens story is one for the books.” For amid
the heightened racial politics of 1960s America, the story of a black man raping
and murdering a white woman ticked every atavistic box for a sensational crime
report. But couple that with an America still reeling from President Kennedy’s
assassination, along with the inchoate sense of things falling apart, and the
Genovese story provided a sensational explanation for what was wrong with
the country. In the story’s lede, the first sentence that summarises the most
important aspects of the story, Gansberg claimed that for more than 30
minutes, 38 law-abiding residents of Queens watched and did nothing while a
killer made three separate attacks on a young and defenceless woman.
Only, this was almost all wrong. There were not three attacks, but two. There
is no record at all of 38 witnesses; the district attorney responsible for the case
could only find six. Just as significant was the location of the two attacks. The first,
which occasioned Genovese’s calls for help, was swift and ended when a neighbour
called from his window, causing Moseley to apparently run away. Anybody coming
it turns to their window from their beds at this early hour would have then seen a young
woman, probably staggering but moving under her own power, moving to the rear
out that of the building, where they lost sight of her. The second attack occurred in a closed
entrance lobby, out of view of everyone apart from one possible witness. Because
The New the stab wounds from the first attack pierced Genovese’s lungs, it was likely that
she could not call for help when attacked again and although she tried to fight
York Times Moseley off, weakened by blood loss she was unable to do so. But no one saw this
final, fatal and mostly silent attack. So rather than three brutal attacks carried
was not as out in plain sight of 38 witnesses, Kitty Genovese’s murder happened unseen and
unheard in an entrance lobby.
infallible On 12 October 2016, The New York Times added an Editor’s Note to the archived
copy of its original report saying that: “Later reporting by The Times and others
as it might has called into question significant elements of this account.”

seem
54 PSYCHOLOGY NOW

around, saw that everyone else was acting
as if there was nothing untoward going
on. Faced with this blanket rejection of his
or her own perception, the experimental
subject struggled to classify the smoke as an
emergency – ‘maybe everyone else was told
about a fire test and I missed the warning’
would be one possible explanation. In the
case of Kitty Genovese, some of the observers
may have misinterpreted Kitty’s screams as
a row between lovers, and therefore chosen
not to act.
It’s not my responsibility
The second obstacle between people seeing
an emergency and acting on it, Darley and
Latané hypothesised, was what became
known as diffusion of responsibility. This
was demonstrated in their first experiment,
and has been replicated in many similar
experiments. Diffusion of responsibility
predicts that a particular person will be less
likely to act if he or she is surrounded by
other bystanders, who similarly have the
opportunity to come to the rescue of the
person under threat. It’s the background to
the I-don’t-want-to-get-involved orientation
of city living that is a consequence of living
among strangers: in a small community,
where everyone knows everyone else, the
person calling for help would be a known
individual who could call on direct links with
the people around. In the throng of a city,
there are always lots of other people, some of
whom – doctors, paramedics, police officers –
might be more qualified to help. Better let one
of them sort it out.
Darley and Latané’s work quickly became
one of the best known findings of social
psychology, even prompting the passing of
a number of ‘Good Samaritan’ laws around
the world that sought to penalise people
for failing to render assistance in cases of
emergency, the thinking presumably being
that by threatening arrest for failing to act,
the law would concentrate the sense of
responsibility in the minds of everyone
witnessing an emergency. Indeed, the idea
of the bystander effect became one of the
shibboleths of common knowledge: we might
think we would come to the aid of people in
distress, but actually we know that, in most
cases, people will probably just hang back
and wait for others to act. It’s the realist view
of human nature.
The bystander effect overturned
However, recent work strongly suggests that
the clear bystander effects discerned by
Darley and Latané, and apparently replicated
by a host of other similar experiments, might
not be so obvious in real-life situations.
Indeed, in some cases, the bystander effect
might even be reversed, with people being
more likely to intervene when there are more
PSYCHOLOGY NOW
THE BLIND EYE
bystanders around. Due to science research Lancaster and Amsterdam. So, in
ethics, the studies conducted by social contradiction to the findings of somewhat
psychologists could not actually put people contrived psychological experiments, the
into real danger, and nor could they cause largest systematic study of real-life
bodily harm. But with the proliferation of behaviour in the face of public conflicts
closed-circuit TV cameras around the world, revealed that bystanders do act, in fact they
it has become possible for researchers to are more likely to act when more people
monitor what happens in real-life emergency are present to witness what is happening.
situations. So a team of scientists, led by Dr Philpot and his team end their study by
Dr Richard Philpot of Lancaster University, suggesting that it is time social psychology
analysed the footage from CCTV cameras changes its narrative from people walking
in urban parts of Lancaster in the United on by to trying to understand why people,
Kingdom, Amsterdam in the Netherlands when faced with a clear act of aggression,
and Cape Town in South Africa – the three will in nine cases out of ten, step in to help
cities being chosen to provide cross-cultural and protect the victim.
comparison to see if there were differences in
responses between the cities.
Philpot’s team found that, when witnessing
219 assaults and arguments, bystanders in
91% of these situations took action to stop
or ameliorate what was going on, these
actions including making gestures to get the
aggressor to calm down; pulling the aggressor
away or interspersing his or her own body
between aggressor and victim; and helping
the victim. What is more, and in direct
contradiction to the prediction of Darley
and Latané’s bystander effect theory,
Philpot and his team found that the more
bystanders were present the more
likely it was that someone would
act, with typically several people
rendering assistance. What was
also very notable was that the
team found no difference in the
rate of interventions between
the three cities, which
suggests that the inclination
to act to help people –
strangers – under attack is
a human universal. This
part of the result is further
supported by the fact that
Cape Town is a significantly
more dangerous city than
Lancaster or Amsterdam,
with presumably greater
risks involved for bystanders
taking actions against
aggressors, and yet the
rate of intervention
compared with
that in
© Getty Image / rudall30
55

THE PSYCHOLOGY
CRISIS
The climate crisis is a risk that our minds
struggle to deal with, but psychological
insights can help catalyse action
WORDS BEATE SONERUD
I
n 2019, the climate crisis gained
mainstream attention. Millions of
people, spearheaded by students,
took to the streets in mass
demonstrations around the world,
calling on political leaders to take climate
action. The teenage climate activist Greta
Thunberg was named Person of the Year
by TIME magazine. The UK government
declared a climate change emergency. This
massive rise in attention to the crisis comes
after decades of scientists and activists
shouting about the myriad of risks climate
change poses to our societies.
After decades of awareness, we have
not solved the existential threat of climate
change. In general, as humans we excel at
developing solutions to our problems. Our
minds were evolved to do exactly that: spot
risks and find solutions to them. But climate
change is a particular risk that our minds
are poorly designed to deal with. Our minds
developed to swiftly address concrete
threats we can see and feel, threats that are
happening right here, right now.
“Climate change is exactly the kind of
threat our minds aren’t equipped to worry
about,” writes Leo Barasi, author of The
Climate Majority: Apathy and Action in an
Age of Nationalism, in a 2018 article. “It seems
distant, happening mostly in the future and
to other people.”
56
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CLIMATE CRISIS
OF THE
Intellectually understanding that we
face threats in the future is not the same
as experiencing that threat directly in the
present, right now. But, increasingly, global
heating is experienced in the present. 18
of the 19 warmest years on record have
occurred since 2001, and meteorologists
say we’re seeing clear fingerprints of
human-induced climate change. Recently,
unprecedented wildfires ravaged Australia.
While wildfires start for natural reasons or
through human actions, climate scientists
stress that climate change plays a
catalysing role in the fires, as record
heatwaves and droughts have
created the conditions that enable
the fires to reach extreme intensity
and coverage.
Despite climate change edging into our
present-day lives, a small minority of people
still deny that climate change is real and
happening. But denial of human-induced
global heating only applies to 4% of the
population, according to a 2017 survey. While
it may gain media attention, this strongest
type of climate science denial is not what’s
holding back action. The vast majority of
people now recognise that climate change
is real. However, even as the distance barrier
is increasingly overcome, this does not
necessarily lead to action, as the ‘doom
barrier’ comes into play.
PSYCHOLOGY NOW
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CLIMATE CRISIS

The doom barrier is a powerful defence “Most feel that climate change is too big to
18 of the our brain applies to protect ourselves
psychologically. Stories of extreme heat
fight. Instead, we choose to run away from
it.” Fear leads us to shy away from thinking
19 warmest and drought, floods and cities drowned
by rising sea levels – and the more-recent
about climate change completely, as our
mind attempts to protect us from feeling

years on record stories of out-of-control wildfires across

Australia – fill us with fear. “When we
those uncomfortable emotions. We will see a
headline about climate change and instead

have occurred feel fear, our minds have three options:

fight, flight or freeze,” explains Caroline
Hickman, a psychotherapist, researcher at
of clicking on it, we will scroll on. A friend
may start a conversation about the crisis and
we immediately change the topic. For those
since 2001 the University of Bath and a driving force
behind the Climate Psychology Alliance.
who do not shy away completely, over time,
they will not feel anything at all when they

PSYCHOLOGY NOW 57

see yet another headline on the severity
of the climate crisis, as our minds become
desensitised to an apocalyptic narrative, no
matter how scientifically valid. As a result, we
end up with climate apathy.
“The media tends to use climate denial as
a label only for those who actively oppose
climate science, but from a psychological
point of view, there are several types of
climate denial,” says Per Espen Stoknes, a
psychologist and director of the Centre for
Green Growth at the Norwegian Business
School. “Individual passive denial is an
important one. At the same time as you
know the scientific facts of the crisis,
you also don’t want to think about it and
you go on with your life as it is. You keep
inconvenient knowledge at bay and lead a
‘double life’.” Caroline Hickman stresses that
climate change denial in its different forms
is an unconscious process: “Psychological
defences are there because people
subconsciously fear they will not survive
knowing the truth.”
The louder, more visible type of climate
denial – people stating to the media that
they don’t believe human-made climate
change is real and problematic – doesn’t
necessarily imply disagreement with
climate science deep down. “These publicly
active deniers ignore, or ridicule, the climate
crisis to keep the social contract of that
particular group going,” explains Per Espen
Stoknes. George Marshall, founder of the
climate communications organisation
Climate Outreach, put it like this in a 2019
interview with the BBC: “Climate change
doesn’t become an issue to be evaluated
on its own terms, but it becomes part of
a package of tribal identity.” In the US, for
example, climate change views are strongly
divided along political lines, with the
left significantly more concerned about
the threat of the climate crisis than the
conservative right.
58
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CLIMATE CRISIS
Then there is dissonance. Say you take
a carbon-intensive long-haul holiday
for some winter sun, at the same time
as you are deeply concerned about
the climate crisis. That flight leads to a
conflict between behaviour and values,
and what psychologists call ‘cognitive
dissonance’ occurs. Cognitive dissonance is
psychologically very painful. A funny thing
happens in our minds as a result: rather than
change our behaviour to fit with our values
– say giving up long-haul flights – more often,
it’s our beliefs we change instead. Our brains
desperately want a congruence between our
values and behaviour, so it alters our values
and beliefs, which is a quicker, simpler thing
to do than change our behaviour. Dissonance
downgrades the climate crisis in importance
in our minds – or we may put in place a belief
that someone else will fix it for us.
The rise of eco-anxiety
On the other side of the spectrum from
climate science deniers sit the climate
fatalists. 14% of people now believe that
catastrophic climate change is inevitable,
according to a 2017 survey. This is a
significantly higher share of the population
than those who don’t believe climate
change is real. These climate fatalists are
disproportionally represented by young
people aged between 16 and 35. In that
younger age group, 22% believe it’s too late
to curb climate change. On the surface, the
climate fatalists who believe we’re doomed
and the people who deny climate change
exists at all seem to be polar opposites. When
it comes to climate action, however, climate
science deniers and climate fatalists look
the same: neither group will act to solve the
problem. If you believe a climate crisis is
inevitable, you will do nothing, because you
believe that your actions will have no impact.
If you believe the climate crisis is a hoax, you
will also do nothing, because you believe it’s
not necessary.
Eco-anxiety – defined by the American
Psychological Association as ‘a chronic
fear of environmental doom’ – is on the rise.
“Feeling depressed, overwhelmed
and anxious about the climate crisis is our
mind’s freeze response,” explains Caroline
Hickman. For many, it’s not a fear grounded
in the immediate present, but rather a fear
of what the future will look like – and a
discomfort with the uncertainty of what to
expect. A persistent fear of climate change
is not just an issue impacting adults; it is also
seen in a growing number of children and
young people.
It may seem tempting to try to yank the
eco-anxious out of their depressed state by
moving into cheerleading mode. ‘Solving
the crisis is still possible’, we might say.
‘Come on, it’s not that bad!’ ‘Technology will
RESPECTING
DIFFERENT
VALUES
“Understanding that people are
motivated to take climate action
for different reasons is vital,”
says Per Espen Stoknes. We all
feel motivated from noticing the
immediate benefits to ourselves,
but what we consider a significant
personal gain will vary, as people
have different values. A political
liberal may put solar panels on the
roof of their house for the warm
glow of feeling they are having a
positive climate impact, while their
conservative neighbour may want
solar panels on their roof to feel
independent from the grid or to
reduce electricity bills. Yet another
neighbour may simply be driven
by adopting the latest trend and
install solar panels for that reason.
If these three people initiate a
conversation around the action
of solar panels and how it makes
them feel, the whole group of
people can find common ground
around a new behaviour. In The
Happy Hero, author Solitaire
Townsend sets out specific actions
for different personality types.
develop that gets us out of this mess’. But
Caroline Hickman says it’s important to
tell eco-anxious people that their feelings
are valid. We shouldn’t ignore and push
down the horror we feel at contemplating
catastrophic climate change, but accept the
feelings and process them. Caroline and other
psychologists stress that feeling anxious
about the climate crisis is not a mental illness,
but a normal – even healthy – reaction to
the distressing state of our planet. “I would
actually be quite worried about the people
who are not expressing anxiety,” Caroline
says. “What we need to do is become okay
with not feeling okay. Feeling depression,
hopelessness and despair is a crucial step on
PSYCHOLOGY NOW

Conversations with others
who feel the same can help us
move through eco-anxiety
the journey to develop resilience. We don’t
want to stay in that anxious, depressed state,
but we want to move through those feelings,
not get rid of them.”
Conversations with others who feel the
same can help people move through eco-
anxiety, Caroline explains. Through the
Climate Psychology Alliance, she runs
Climate Cafés, where people come together
over a cup of tea and cake to talk informally
about how they feel about the climate crisis.
Talking to people you already know, like
friends, family or colleagues, can have the
same therapeutic effect. “It doesn’t matter
if they’re strangers or people you know, as
long as people feel their feelings are valid
and shared by others. It reduces isolation
and shame.” Once we’ve processed our
anxiety and feelings of hopelessness, we can
move onto taking climate action – and that
activism will be more sustainable and robust.
PSYCHOLOGY NOW
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CLIMATE CRISIS
“Often people rush into activism as a way
to avoid feelings, but that quickly becomes
unsustainable,” explains Caroline.
Flipping to a positive script
Psychology also tells us how we can shift
the behaviours of those who are not yet
eco-anxious, but remain disengaged from
the climate crisis. While the distanced
doom of the climate crisis itself means
a whole host of defences pop up in our
brains when we hear it mentioned, how
climate solutions are communicated also
matters. In his 2017 TED talk, Per Espen
Stoknes argues that we need to focus on the
immediate benefits individuals will feel from
adopting sustainable behaviours instead
of trying to sell behaviour changes on the
basis of avoiding future societal risks. To shift
behaviour, the benefits of acting should be
emphasised at least three times as much as
the negative risks of not acting.
Whether it’s eating less meat and dairy,
switching to an electric car or putting your
pension into sustainable funds, individual
climate actions are often positioned as
sacrifices made for the greater good of people
in the future. This is a narrative that doesn’t
make for strongly motivated individuals.
Psychological distance of the benefits we will
see kicks in. Moreover, as humans, we are
averse to loss. Our minds hate losing more
than we like gaining, and so if we see eating a
falafel burger instead of a beef burger as the
loss of taste or even freedom of choice, we
won’t feel good, even if we recognise that at
the same time we’re also gaining.
But what will we gain? If a single individual
changes their behaviour and reduces their
carbon footprint as a result, that doesn’t
mean that same person will automatically
59

experience less adverse climate change
impacts in the future. Motivation to change
our behaviour drops if we feel we’re making
sacrifices when others like us are not: ‘Why
should I give up meat if no one else does it?’
‘Why should I give up flying if everyone else
continues to fly?’
If we want people to shift their behaviours,
we should instead emphasise how an
environmentally sustainable lifestyle can
boost their own wellbeing in the short-term.
Biking instead of driving enables you to
get more exercise and fresh air, and save
money on petrol. Swapping minced beef for
mushrooms and lentils when cooking can
have health benefits, as well as cutting down
the money spent on the weekly food shop.
Because,
it turns out,
saving the
world is good
for you
60
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CLIMATE CRISIS
Research suggests that sustainable funds
can outperform standard funds. Voting for a
government committed to moving to a low-
carbon society will lead to things like better
low-carbon transport networks, in the form
of trains, public transport and electric cars,
which would improve air quality – a desirable
thing for the majority of people who live in
cities. The reduction of carbon footprints as
a result of any of these behaviour changes
then becomes a bonus in people’s minds, not
the primary driving force.
Still, some of the actions involved in a
more climate-friendly lifestyle – like foregoing
long-haul flights – may feel like sacrifices,
even if there are always silver linings that can
be emphasised, like avoiding jetlag, saving
money and exploring places closer to home
you would otherwise not have seen. Solitaire
Townsend, sustainability expert and author
of The Happy Hero: How to change your life
by changing the world says that we must
remember that doing something that has
a positive impact on other people also
makes us feel good. On the Happy Hero
website, she writes: “Research shows that
trying to make a difference, even in the
smallest ways, can extend your life, improve
your relationships and even help you recover
from a cold… because, it turns out, saving the
world is good for you.
Feeling a sense of agency and purpose has
a positive impact on our mental health – a
desirable thing in societies where depression
and anxiety is rife. Particularly for those
experiencing eco-anxiety, taking concrete
climate action is part of the prescription
from psychologists – alongside processing
the emotions themselves. Regaining a sense
of control feels good, and there’s also simply
PSYCHOLOGY NOW
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CLIMATE CRISIS

CLIMATE PSYCHOLOGY IN OUR

PROFESSIONAL LIVES

As individuals, we can take climate action in our professional lives as well as our personal ones. But depending
on the organisational culture where we work, it can feel threatening to our professional identities to raise the
topic of climate action, explains Per Espen Stoknes. “If people expect tension between the company culture
and their own personal views, they’re not likely to speak out. The fear of social dissonance, a difference
between yourself and the rest of the group, is a strong deterrent. We’re constantly scanning for responses from
colleagues to what we are saying, and we worry that if we say something that doesn’t align with everyone else,
we will lose career opportunities.”
Instead of becoming internal climate activists within their organisations, people shy away from the topic. This
might be changing as more organisations are setting public climate targets, and top management are putting
climate strategies in place. Individuals in the organisation will then feel it would be aligned with the culture to
bring their thoughts and ideas on climate action to the table. “The psychology really differs if we have disclosed
organisational climate targets and strategies,” says Per Espen Stoknes.

less room in our minds for anxiety when
we’re busy doing something practical. For
those who are anxious and depressed for
other reasons than the rapidly deteriorating
environment, engaging in climate
action may also come with
mental health benefits. In the
book Lost Connections, Johann
Hari argues that the widespread
states of depression and anxiety
come from a myriad of disconnections,
including disconnection from meaningful
work, from other people, from meaningful
values, from the natural world and from
a hopeful or secure future. Taking
climate action, particularly if done
together with a group of others, can
simultaneously contribute to mending
several of those disconnections.
Influencing the default settings
Seeing sustainable lifestyles as good for our
own immediate wellbeing is a motivator to
shift behaviours. But our decision-making
is influenced by many factors besides a
fully rational analysis of benefits relative to
costs. While we like to think we’re rational
beings, a large share of our decision making
is irrational. We’re strongly influenced by how
choices are presented to us, what behavioural
economists call ‘choice architecture’. For
example, what is considered the default
option hugely influences our choices. Until
now, our tendencies to select the default has
largely been a contributing cause for climate
inaction. But our preference to continue with
the status quo also means that once you
move to more environmentally sustainable
behaviour patterns, they will stick as well.
Moreover, many of the behaviour changes
that have the largest impact on our carbon
footprints, we also only have to make once
before the sustainable version becomes the
default. Switching your pension and savings
into sustainable funds, you only do once.
Ditto for moving to a renewable electricity
provider or putting solar panels on your roof.
Governments and businesses play a central
role in determining the choice architecture of
our lives. To see behaviour changes at scale,
we want to change the default settings for our
behaviour to make it simple for ourselves to
act in a climate-friendly manner. Businesses
determine product placements in shops, for
example, and they influence social norms
through advertising. They determine how
products and services are produced and
delivered, and they control what innovation
funding is put into. Governments direct
innovation funding as well, and through
regulations and incentives, they influence
what transport networks and energy sources
are available to us and what our food systems
look like. As individuals, we may often feel
we have little influence over how choices
are presented to us in our everyday life. But
we do have an impact on the government
through voting and lobbying. Companies
also respond to what they believe their
customers are asking for. Retail company
Tesco, for example, is now exploring how it
can alter how choices are presented in its
shops to nudge its customers towards more
environmentally friendly and healthier food
products. If climate sustainable choices are
presented as the default, simplest choice, our
minds will want to take that route.
We are social animals
As humans, we are social pack animals. Much
in the same way that our decision making
is strongly influenced by how choices are
presented to us, we are swayed by what
people around us are doing. We want to fit

PSYCHOLOGY NOW 61
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CLIMATE CRISIS

in with others like us. As much as we might

like to think we act independently of social
pressure, our minds are constantly checking
in with others around us and adjusting
accordingly. Studies prove just how much
we alter our behaviour to fit with social
norms. Hotel rooms that have signs saying
that 75% of guests staying in the rooms
reuse their towels leads to an increase in
towel reuse by as much as 50%, say the
results of a study published in the Journal
of Consumer Research in 2008. Similarly,
informing online shoppers that others were
buying environmentally sustainable products
resulted in a 65% increase in shoppers
making at least one sustainable purchase,
shows a study published in the Journal of
Environmental Psychology in 2015.
For companies, institutions and campaigns,
reminding the target audience that others
like them are participating can see a surge
in engagement. The group we want to fit
with can be a close-knitted circle of family
and friends, a network of colleagues, or the
larger and looser constellations of people
in the same town, city or country. Even the
THE STORY OF
behaviour of people we’ve never met, but
who we consider to be similar to us, because
ASHTON HAYES
we travel to the same place or shop at the
same store, can influence decision making.
Social tipping points happen as the social
form switches from one thing to another. We The small English town of Ashton Hayes implemented a community
might initially suspect that a shift in social
norms happens when the majority has
program for climate action that reduced emissions by 24%. Looking
changed their viewpoints and behaviours. at the initiative with a psychology lens can explain its success.
However, research suggests that a relatively First, local campaigners focused on highlighting the immediate
small minority group of committed activists personal benefits of making changes, like the cost savings that come
can suddenly transform the viewpoints of with reduced energy use following energy efficiency improvements.
the rest of the group. Until now, social norms
The primary motivation they appealed to was not to save the world,
have largely held back climate action, but this
may change. but to experience benefits right here, right now.
Second, the campaign tapped into our social nature and relied on
Sharing positive stories neighbours and friends sharing the initiative with others in their circle.
Our brain’s desire for narrative and stories is As more people got the sense that others like them were interested
another feature of our hardwiring relevant and getting involved, they would have been driven to join in to feel
to the climate crisis. Media coverage is often
focused on the facts of climate science. Even
like they were following social norms in the group.
if what we hear are facts about the potential Third, success stories of people coming up with and implementing
solutions – how much cheaper solar panels original actions that saved energy and money were shared widely.
have become over the last decade, for Hearing that others were taking action and feeling benefits from it
example – numbers and logic do not stick in would have incentivised others, as they wanted both to experience
our minds in the same way that stories do.
the benefits for themselves as well as be in line with group behaviour.
Stories, rather than facts, are what will allow
us to imagine what a desirable, sustainable Fourth, community meetings about the campaign were informal and
light. This lightness would have allowed the motivating feelings of
interest and hope to emerge, rather than the guilt, shame or fear,

We alter which could have only cemented denial and apathy.

Finally, the community teamed up with a university professor who

our behaviour volunteered to track emissions over time. The community overall
could then see tangible results of their actions on a group basis,
to fit with boosting motivation further and overcoming any misleading
negativity bias that their small actions didn’t matter.
social norms
62 PSYCHOLOGY NOW
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CLIMATE CRISIS

future could look like. The documentary and referring to your feelings can lead attacked and fall into a denial state. This is
2040, released in 2019, sets out what a to conversations that are more fruitful in detrimental to the relationship, but also to
sustainable future could look like in the year sparking behaviour change. And, importantly, spreading the new positive behaviour.
2040, if we implement at scale the climate conversations that allow you to maintain or Conversations around sustainable
solutions that already exist today. strengthen the relationship with the other behaviours should be grounded in curiosity
After being motivated by worry about what person. “Many environmentalists struggle and genuine interest in the other person’s
the unabated climate crisis would mean for with having these conversations. Facts and experience and feelings – as in any other
his young daughter, Australian documentary rationality become more important than the conversation. Enthusiasm for the climate
maker Damon Gameau travelled widely to relationship with the other person,” explains actions you may have taken yourself – like
meet individuals who are implementing Per Espen. replacing beef burgers with vegan ones – is
solutions like solar farms and sustainable If you share with your friends how eating positive, but conveying a ‘holier than thou’
farming practices. In a 2019 interview with more plant-based makes you feel good, attitude tends to backfire and provoke rather
The Guardian, the filmmaker says we’ve instead of telling them about the amount of than inspire. Social media may play a limited
had a failure of imagination when it comes carbon emissions associated with red meat, role as a space for these conversations. “I
to the climate crisis. The climate crisis is that is a more enticing story to the person have little faith that social media newsfeeds
most often a story of what the world we listening: it’s character-driven, which our can create shifts in attitudes,” says Per
don’t want would look like; the climate story brains connect most strongly with. Moreover, Espen. “Social media mainly reinforces
must become one about the kind of world it helps us to avoid falling into lecturing existing attitudes. We need to have these
we want to live in. Some people are starting the other person, who can then easily feel conversations in person, face to face.”
to recognise the power of story to spark
mainstream interest in solutions.
The Viable Cities program in Sweden has
employed a ‘chief storyteller’ to communicate
to city-dwellers. Through stories, citizens will
be able to deeply relate to what it would feel
like to live in a carbon-neutral future world –
and as a result get on board with supporting a
societal shift in that direction.
We need stories about what a desirable
future could look and feel like, but we also
need stories about the individual people
who are acting today to make those attractive
visions a reality, according to Per Espen
Stoknes. Character-driven, human stories
capture our brains most effectively. If we
are captured by a story, we absorb the
emotions of the characters in the story – and
neuroscience research can now prove it.
Even after the story is over, those feelings
– and even desire to mimic behaviours we
have seen in the story – remain in us.
Solitaire Townsend argues that stories
are instrumental in galvanising hope
that we can solve the climate crisis. In a
2018 article in Forbes, she writes that
since humans started telling stories,
our ‘meta myth’ – the story we most
often tell – is a tale of an unlikely hero
who uses courage, collaboration and
cleverness to overcome terrible odds
and win in the end. We now need to
tell each other these kind of stories about
climate heroes, she argues.

From debates to conversations

Movies, television series or novels may
be what first comes to mind when we
think of storytelling, but each of us tells
© Getty Images / Olena Chernenka

stories in our own lives all the time, in

conversations we have with other people.
“We need more conversations about climate
actions, but we want to avoid arguments
about climate facts,” says Per Espen
Stoknes. He explains that talking
about your own experiences

PSYCHOLOGY NOW 63
 5 FACTS ABOUT HYPNOSIS
1
Hypnosis has been
around for centuries
The use of hypnosis as a complementary therapy might
seem quite modern, but it has a long history. In some
cultures and religions, forms of hypnotic or trance-like
states have been practised for thousands of years, in the belief
that they have healing properties. In the late 18th century, German
physician Franz Mesmer adopted a form of hypnotism that later
became known as ‘mesmerism’. However, Mesmer believed that there
was a mystical or magical element – he called it ‘animal magnetism’ –
that fuelled his therapies, but this idea was discredited as hypnotism
evolved and found its way into modern medicine. These days,
hypnotism, through hypnotherapy, is considered an alternative
therapy and is available through private therapists in the UK.
64
You’ve probably already
2 experienced hypnosis
Hypnosis is a natural state of mind in which you become
highly focused without being consciously aware. You
lose awareness of your surroundings and can shut out
distractions. You might perform tasks on autopilot during a state of
hypnosis. It’s not unusual to fall into this hypnotic state regularly in
your normal daily life. For example, when you’re walking along a route
that you know well, you might arrive without having consciously
thought about what you are doing. Or when you’re engrossed in a
television programme, you might enter a kind of trance state where
you ‘zone out’ your surroundings and only take in what you are
watching. During this state, you receive information into your brain
subconsciously and act accordingly.
PSYCHOLOGY NOW
 5 FACTS ABOUT HYPNOSIS

5 FACTS
ABOUT
Hypnotherapy, which induces a state of hypnosis to
help treat conditions or change habits, is different
to ‘stage hypnosis’ used to entertain. We present the
facts and dispel some myths
WORDS JULIE BASSETT

3 4
You’re awake
during hypnosis
Many believe that you are in a
form of sleep during hypnosis. It’s
understandable really, as the word
hypnosis derives from the Ancient Greek
word for sleep (‘hypno’), and stage (theatrical)
hypnosis typically involves ‘waking up’ the
person being performed upon when the trick
is finished. However, the type of hypnosis
achieved during hypnotherapy treatment
is a state of mind during which you remain
Hypnosis
affects people
differently
It’s difficult to know what
to expect when it comes to
hypnosis and how effective it will be, as no
two people will have the same response. For
a start, different therapists will use different
techniques, so even if you have a bad
experience with one form of hypnotherapy,
it can be worth trying another therapist
who may use a different method to induce
5
You are
in control
If your only experience of
hypnosis is by watching it on
TV or at a stage show, then
you might think that you’re handing over
control of your mind to another person. This
is a common myth, but there is no mind
control in hypnosis. You can’t be made to do
anything that you’re not comfortable with. A
therapist can make suggestions to help you
meet your goals or explore your thoughts,
© Getty Images / Pitju / Anastasiia_New

awake. You are taken into a deeply relaxed
and focused state. In this period of time, a
therapist can tackle the things you want to
work on and make gentle suggestions to help
meet your goals. You should remain fully in
control and aware during these sessions, and
you can often remember the suggestions
made during hypnosis.
hypnosis. Also, some people are more
susceptible to hypnosis than others, meaning
that they are more freely able to enter that
relaxed, concentrated state of mind in which
suggestions can be made. Some people
describe being in hypnosis as a light or floaty
experience, whereas others say that they feel
heavy during the trance state.
but really they’re just guiding you through the
process, not controlling you. You can even
learn the art of self-hypnosis to help change
long-term habits, for example, though it can
take some practice to be effective. You can’t
be hypnotised against your will, and if you’re
not open to the process, then it’s less likely to
work for you.

PSYCHOLOGY NOW 65
 HOW TO NAVIGATE SIBLING RIVALRY IN ADULTHOOD

HOW TO NAVIGATE

66 PSYCHOLOGY NOW
 HOW TO NAVIGATE SIBLING RIVALRY IN ADULTHOOD
IN ADULTHOOD
You love your brothers and sisters, but why do they
leave you so… ‘arrrrgh’? Read on to discover how to
turn your sibling rivalry into sibling revelry
WORDS KATHERINE BEBO
rama… kindness… resentment…
D love… bitchiness… friendship…
grudges… warmth… arguments…
concern… belittling… No, this isn’t
describing the latest highs and lows
of your favourite soap opera, but the relationships
many people have with their family members –
specifically siblings. “For many of us, our sibling
relationships existed before we could even
speak,” says Hilda Burke, psychotherapist, couples
counsellor and author of The Phone Addiction
Workbook. “Because they were formed for most
of us at a time when we were preverbal, logic and
reason may not feature as prominently as in other
relationships.” For this reason, Burke – who is a
member of the British Association for Counselling
and Psychotherapy – believes that the sibling
dynamic is the most challenging to change.
That’s not to say change isn’t possible. If you have
a tricky relationship with your siblings, you can
certainly steer it in a more positive direction. But,
first, it’s important to look at the reasons why your
sister leaves you feeling inadequate, your brother
makes you want to scream, and they both leave you
wanting to emigrate to the other side of the world to
avoid family get-togethers at all costs.
The favourite
Sibling relationships are influenced by a number
of factors, such as gender, genetics, life events,
experiences away from the family, money and
parental relationships. Parental favouritism is often
PSYCHOLOGY NOW
acknowledged as a key factor in sibling rivalries.
If you perceive you’re not the ‘favoured’ one, your
inner child can’t help but scream: “But it’s not
faaaaaaaaair!” And if you are the ‘favoured’ one,
perhaps you feel added pressure from your parents
to achieve more, so resent your siblings for having
an ‘easy ride’. Although parents often try to treat
their children equally, favouritism is actually very
typical, and research has shown that parenting
plays a powerful role in contributing to sibling
rivalry among adults. A study carried out at Cornell
University found that only 15% of those interviewed
felt that they were treated equally to their siblings
by their mothers.
Birth order can also play a part in sibling rivalries.
As a child, perhaps you were ‘displaced’ by a new
sibling, which can be particularly challenging if
there’s a big age gap between you and the new
arrival. You may have liked being ‘the baby’ but, with
a new sibling, you were suddenly in the middle,
which could have been unsettling. “That can create
a lot of animosity towards the new family member,”
says Burke, “which may never totally dissipate.”
Parent trap
Adult sibling rivalries can manifest themselves
in various ways. Perhaps you and your siblings
have out-and-out rows? Maybe snide remarks
pepper your interactions? Or it could be that your
relationships have completely fallen apart and you
are now estranged. However the thoughts, actions
and behaviours present themselves, there’s often
67
 HOW TO NAVIGATE SIBLING RIVALRY IN ADULTHOOD

a lot of blame and envy flying around. “One
sibling may blame the other for the fact (or
their perception) that one or both parents
treat them differently,” explains Burke. But
rather than it being because the parents
love a particular child more (a notion that
most mums and dads would balk at), there
are often other factors at play. Perhaps your
mum lives closer to your sister than you, so
is on-hand for babysitting duties, impromptu
shopping trips and day-to-day quality time. Or
maybe your brother and dad have a similar
sense of humour, so guffaw at jokes that, to
you, are high up on the cringe scale. These
things are no one’s fault – they just are. And
the sooner you can accept them, the happier
you’ll be. Try not to take things personally.
Your relationship with your parents is yours;
theirs is theirs. There’s really no point in
comparing them.
Research carried out between a group of
18 to 65 year olds found that more than
a third had either hostile or indifferent
relationships with their siblings. This seems
such a shame. While your siblings might not
be perfect (who is?), if you can foster, fix or
forge a strong, positive relationship with them,
you’ll likely find that you are more content for
it. After all, who else can you reminisce with
about that time your dad fell in the lake at
Center Parcs?
The green-eyed sister
So, what can be done to combat sibling
rivalry? First, you need to identify the root
cause of your grudge or frustration towards
your sibling. It may not be one specific thing
but a tangle of experiences and feelings,
so sit down and allow yourself the time to
unfurl your emotions. “Take responsibility
identify the
for how your own resentment towards them
is affecting the relationship,” advises Burke.
There are two sides to every story (or three,
or four… depending on how many siblings
you have), so try to see the situation from
your siblings’ point of view. What role have
you played over the years? Are you entirely
blameless? Chances are, probably not. If you
are jealous of your sibling, it’s good to admit
this jealousy – if only to yourself. “So many of
us feel we ‘shouldn’t’ feel jealous,” ventures
Burke, “so we suppress these feelings and,
[as with] any suppressed feelings, they will
likely surface in other ways, maybe a bitchy
comment here or there.”
Jealousy can stir up preverbal feelings
in us, Burke explains. Ultimately, it brings
us back to the time when we first wanted
what someone else had – like our mother’s
attention – and couldn’t fully express that.
So when we’re envying someone else’s
achievements, what we’re experiencing is
something very young within us. “As such, we

root cause of need to go gently on ourselves,” says Burke.

Instead of reacting to your jealousy, judging
yourself for having such feelings or trying to
your grudge suppress it, be curious – ask yourself why you
feel this way. What is this jealousy telling you?

towards your “So rather than resenting your sibling for what
they have, bring your focus to what is within

sibling your frame of influence and act on that,”

advises Burke. Envy is often caused by low

“I’VE ALWAYS FELT

ON THE BACK FOOT”

“My brother is two and a half years older than me. My

parents had planned to have just one child, but then
realised a sibling for Paul would be nice, so I came along.
I’m naturally competitive, but as the younger child I’d lose
at most games we played. Paul was just that bit more
advanced, plus he’d never teach me all the rules to give
himself an advantage – a fact he denies to this day. I’ve
always felt on the back foot. The other areas in which
I began to outstrip Paul didn’t count for much to me.
Whatever Paul did, I wanted to do. I even tried to follow him
to Cambridge University – while he secured a place, I didn’t.
It’s still a sore point for me. Paul is pretty oblivious to all this.
We’re good friends and close. This rivalry is very one-sided;
he doesn’t see it as a competition.”
JESSICA, 35

68 PSYCHOLOGY NOW
 HOW TO NAVIGATE SIBLING RIVALRY IN ADULTHOOD

Now you’re talking much more toxic, unpleasant edge. It can

Don’t try to compete with your siblings. In
fact, don’t try to compete with anyone. The
FAMILIAR most content people are those who look at
what they have and are grateful; not those
niggle, fester and ultimately make each
family gathering incredibly awkward and
fun-free. No one wants that. Although it’s
not always easy to rise above the barbed

SIBLINGS who look at what other people have and

“Having lots of siblings is like
having built-in best friends”
KIM KARDASHIAN
“He’s rude, arrogant, intimidating
and lazy. He’s the angriest man
covet it. Rather than comparing what your
siblings get from your parents and wanting
it (more time, more affection, more phone
calls… whatever), think about what you get
from your parents and appreciate that. Or, if
you feel you can talk to your parents about
how you feel without causing World War
III, do that. It’s likely they’re not aware of
how much it bothers you when they regale
you with endless tales about your brother’s
children, or how upset it makes you when
they tell you how huge your sister’s pay rise
was. The childish urge to plead, “But what
comments made at you, or fake-smile your
way through your sister’s ‘hilarious’ tale of
when you accidentally spilled red wine on
her wedding dress, don’t retaliate with your
own passive-aggressive comments. And if
your brother constantly tries to bait you by
calling you ‘Muppet’ (the ‘cute’ nickname
he gave you when you were kids), just don’t
engage. Simply carry on as if he has called
you by your actual name. He may want a
reaction, so don’t give him the satisfaction of
giving him one. You can always scream into a
pillow later! Of course, if it’s just good-natured
banter, laugh along and enjoy the time you’re

© Getty Images / CSA Images

you’ll ever meet. He’s like a man
with a fork in a world of soup”
NOEL GALLAGHER
ON LIAM
“My first job is big sister and I
take that very seriously”
VENUS WILLIAMS
“It’s that middle-brother
syndrome. The older child has a
very clear identity, and the baby
gets a lot of attention.
The middle brother is a little
bit in no-man’s land”
OWEN WILSON
“Be nice to your siblings, they’re
your best link to your past and
the most likely to stay with you
in the future”
BAZ LUHRMANN
self-esteem and diminished self-confidence. If
you can work on these areas within yourself,
you can stop things about your siblings – like
your sister’s ludicrously flawless skin or your
brother’s enormous house – from making you
feel inadequate. You’re not able to control
what your siblings do or how they are, but
you are able to control your reaction to it. If,
however, it’s your sibling who is jealous of
you, remember that their jealousy is theirs
and not yours to make right. In the words of
RuPaul: “Whatever people think of me is none
of my business.”
about meeeeee?” can be framed in a mature spending together.
manner and you can start a dialogue with Sibling relationships are very often the
something like: “I know you love us all the longest ones that we have in our lives, so
same, but it bothers me when…” Don’t be trying to nurture them – or, at the very least,
confrontational or rude; just tell them how not get riled by them – can be a key part to
you feel. Chances are, they’re not actively our happiness.
trying to hurt your feelings but, instead, are
simply being a bit oblivious. If you make
them aware of this, they can change their
behaviour. Or you could try to discuss
things with your siblings. You may very well
discover that your parents have been telling
them all about your achievements and
your siblings are similarly annoyed/upset/
frustrated. Voila: a bonding experience!
Support act
If talking to your family isn’t an option and
would only cause a greater rift in your
relationships, try to accept the situation
as best you can. You may not get as much
support or approval from your parents or
siblings as you would like – but that’s okay.
This support and approval can be gained
from elsewhere: your partner, other family
members, friends, or your own children. With
your own children, try to raise them so that
they won’t have negative issues with their
siblings in adulthood. While it’s impossible
to treat each child exactly the same – they
all have different needs, wants, talents and
personalities – it’s important that the whole
family celebrates each child’s abilities and
uniqueness. Don’t compare your children or
define what ‘success’ means to you. Success
is different for everyone – whether you’re
a child or an adult. The crucial thing that a
child needs to know is that their parents ‘have
their back’ and are proud of them and their
achievements – whatever they may be.
Banter or bitchiness?
While sibling rivalry among children can
often result in some harmless bickering
or competitive dives for the last biscuit, as
adults, sibling rivalry can start to take on a

PSYCHOLOGY NOW 69
 10 UNETHICAL PSYCHOLOGY EXPERIMENTS

10
UNETHICAL
EXPERIMENTS
Meet the researchers who cast aside morality to
uncover secrets of the human mind
70 PSYCHOLOGY NOW
 10 UNETHICAL PSYCHOLOGY EXPERIMENTS

WORDS JAMES HORTON

espite our immense its harshest would be minimal. But studies

D intelligence, humans are

irrational, confusing
creatures. Our emotions
and behaviours are
sometimes hard to predict and even
harder to justify, making the science of
psychology essential for truly understanding
weren’t always this way.
A researcher’s pursuit for knowledge – and
sometimes personal glory – can drive them
to conduct studies of an insidious nature on
human test subjects, and in past decades
there has been little legislation to keep these
experimenters in check.
A
researcher’s
pursuit for
our incredible minds. Like in any science,
psychologists have long used controlled
Throughout this feature, we’ll reveal a
government-funded study that secretly knowledge can
experiments to test their hypotheses, but
their test subjects aren’t viruses or bacteria –
spiked civilians with psychoactive drugs,
uncover several experiments that aimed drive them to
they’re us.
Today if you were to enter a university
psychology study, you would likely be met
to traumatise young children, and explore
others that caused volunteers considerable
distress in a bid to reveal some unsettling
conduct studies
by a young, excited graduate student with
a detailed disclosure form. They’d take you
truths about the human psyche. So strap into
your harnesses and read on, and see if you
of an insidious
through the process and explicitly warn
of any discomfort you may feel, which at
can discover when a human being simply
becomes a datum to the experimenter’s eye. nature
PSYCHOLOGY NOW 71
 10 UNETHICAL PSYCHOLOGY EXPERIMENTS

LITTLE ALBERT
STUDY
Pavlov’s dogs were conditioned on treats;
baby Albert was conditioned on fear
Experimenting on unwilling or unaware test
subjects is always considered dubious, but to
experiment on an innocent baby is arguably
the worst of the lot. But that is exactly what
John Watson decided to with little baby
Albert, who found himself as Watson’s subject
at just nine months old.
The experiment started off innocuously
enough. Albert was introduced to an
adorable rabbit, an excitable monkey, a
friendly dog and a curious small white rat.
He appeared engaged and interested in all
of them – especially the scurrying rat – and
even cupped the dog’s paws with both of his
hands. He showed no signs of fear, which was
exactly what Watson wanted.
As the months progressed, Watson began
conditioning Albert to fear the animals. Every
time one of them would get close to the baby
he would clatter on a metal bar and frighten
him. This caused Albert distress and he soon
learned to associate the animals with his fear,
and would either cry or try to crawl away
when in their presence, even without the bar
being struck.
But it appeared that this torture was not
enough for the researcher. Over time, the
conditioning affect faded, and Albert would
grow more settled in the presence of the
animals. This encouraged Watson to re-
introduce the clanging of the bar, re-igniting
Albert’s fear to prove that his conditioning
theory could be used repeatedly.
Albert’s mother received the paltry fee of
$1 for her infant son’s participation in
the experiment.

THE MONSTER
STUDY
An attempt to cause a life-long affliction
in children to prove one theory
Wendell Johnson was a prominent speech
pathologist in the 1930s. For those who knew
him this was no surprise, because it was a
profession he had a personal stake in – he
had suffered with a speech impediment
since childhood. He was adamant that
his parents’ actions were to blame for his
disorder. He believed that highlighting a
child’s speaking difficulties made them
overly self-conscious of their words, which
over time would develop into a life-long
impediment. To prove his theory, in 1938
Johnson recruited a master’s student,
Mary Tudor, to experiment on unwilling
orphan children.
During her sessions, Tudor separated the
children into two groups, both containing
children with pre-diagnosed speaking
difficulties and able speakers. One group
received only positive input regarding their
speech, and the other received chastising and
negative reinforcement
to make them self-
conscious when speaking.
The study hoped to find
that those with speaking
difficulties would improve in the
positive group, while impediments
would worsen in the other.
The experimental data supported
neither hypothesis, but the legacy of the
study was the emotional trauma suffered
by the children in the negative group.
Some withdrew and became incredibly
quiet and self-conscious individuals,
causing Tudor’s peers to dub her thesis
as ‘the monster study’. Johnson himself
committed another ethically dubious act
by not discussing the work upon its
completion, deciding instead to ignore
evidence that clearly contradicted his
preferred hypothesis.

72 PSYCHOLOGY NOW

THE ROBBER’S
CAVE EXPERIMENT
A scheme that manipulated children
into tribal warfare
Any fan of a sports team will tell you
that it’s easy to become competitive
and antagonistic towards members of
rival groups. Psychologist Muzafer Sherif
described these tribal thoughts as part of
the realistic conflict theory, which states
that different factions will inevitably fall
into competition and animosity when
battling for limited resources.
In his most famous experiment, Sherif
designed an experiment involving
unsuspecting youths at camp. After
arriving at Robber’s Cave State Park,
Oklahoma, US, a cohort of 12-year-old
boys was divided into two groups. During
the first week, the groups were kept
unaware of each other’s existence, and the
boys bonded with their peers and shared
in activities such as hiking and swimming.
However, this tranquillity was not to last.
Over the following days, the groups were
introduced and forced to compete. They
would race to pitch tents, wrestle in tugs
of war and play baseball, with the winners
receiving a prize. To increase the tension,
experimenters would also declare that the
contests were extremely close, and feelings
of deep prejudice soon formed. One group
even went so far as to destroy their rival’s
AVERSION THERAPY
A brutal treatment plan that preyed on desperate,
persecuted and coerced individuals
The time when homosexuality was
considered a disease is still well within
living memory for many. A slew of
governments were eager to help ‘cure’
such an affliction and established centres
reliant on unproven yet widely used
procedures. The conscript military of
apartheid South Africa was home to one of
the most nefarious treatment centres
for homosexuals.
The main practice to convert patients
to heterosexuality was aversion therapy,
which involved showing the patient erotic
PSYCHOLOGY NOW
10 UNETHICAL PSYCHOLOGY EXPERIMENTS
PROJECT
MK
ULTRA
The drug-induced
investigation into mind
control funded by the
US Treasury
In the 1950s, the United States had grown
concerned over reports that China
and the Soviet Union were developing
mind-control technologies to use on
their undercover operatives. Not to be
outdone, the US started administering
psychoactive drugs as a gateway to mind
control, sometimes on willing subjects
and sometimes on unsuspecting victims.
Part of the MK Ultra’s operations was
one Project Midnight Climax, in which
prostitutes under the employ of the CIA
lured in unsuspecting men and sneakily
drugged them with LSD, a psychoactive
agent that causes hallucinations. The
agents, secretly watching from behind a
mirror, would then observe the effects it
flag, inspiring an act of vengeance where
had on the men’s minds.
the flag-destroyer’s cabin was ransacked.
Although much of the documentation
Soon fist-fights broke out, and the
of MK Ultra has been lost or destroyed,
researchers had to pull the boys apart.
we know that it directly caused at least
one death. A CIA scientist named Frank
Olson consumed a drink secretly spiked
with LSD and several days later fell to his
death from a hotel window. President
Gerald Ford finally ended the futile and
sinister project in 1976 as he moved to
limit the powers of intelligence agencies
operating in the US.
images or videos of a homosexual
nature before inflicting them with pain
or discomfort. In South Africa electrical
shocks were applied under the arms,
but other centres would give the patient
sickness pills so they’d vomit as they saw
the images.
The hope was that the patient would
begin to apply feelings of pain and
nausea to those of sexual thoughts about
members of their own sex, thus driving
them into heterosexuality, but success
was rare.
73
 10 UNETHICAL PSYCHOLOGY EXPERIMENTS

THE THE BYSTANDER

APATHY TEST
NATURE VS Sometimes the results of a study are
NURTURE just as dark as the experiment itself

CASE On 13 March 1964, a young woman named

Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death as she
walked home from work in Queens, New
STUDY York. The brutal murder was committed
in a populous neighbourhood and Kitty
screamed for help, but to no avail. It was
One vulnerable reported that 37 people heard her cries,
but not one came to her rescue in time.
family afforded an Psychologists described this phenomenon
ambitious researcher as the bystander effect, a trait that means
we’re more likely to do nothing when part Unbeknownst to the test subjects, every
his ideal subject to of a group (see page 52). member of the group aside from them was
test gender roles Social psychologists John Darley and an actor, one of which would feign a severe
Bibb Latané decided to conduct an epileptic fit during the test. Disturbingly,
At just eight months old, twins Bruce and experiment in the wake of this heinous the researchers observed the bystander
Brian Reimer were admitted to hospital crime to test the extent of the bystander effect in full force. If the participant was in a
for a routine circumcision operation. effect. They invited participants into a one-on-one group with the suffering actor,
However, the surgical equipment study under the guise that the goal was to they would seek help nearly every time.
malfunctioned during Bruce’s surgery discuss their college lives. The participants But when they were part of a group, they
and the child unfortunately lost most of were physically isolated from one another would seek help less than one-third of the
his penis. Bruce’s parents were dismayed but would be placed in groups of various time, instead leaving the supposed sufferer
until they saw Doctor John Money on sizes to discuss the problem via audio. to their fate.
television. Money believed that gender
roles were solely determined by how
children were raised, and so together the
Reimers decided that the young child
would become Brenda. She was Money’s
ideal experiment.
Money published the gender-switching
case study when Brenda was nine years
THE FACIAL
old and claimed it was a massive success,
but privately the child was having
difficulty mixing with other girls. Her
EXPRESSIONS
depression only worsened as
she reached puberty, and
at 13 her parents took
EXPERIMENT
the step to tell her the
truth. Brenda swiftly
Do we all look the same when
decided to become massaging a box of frogs?
David, and would
later have a penis In the 1920s, psychologist Carney Landis He electrocuted his subjects to
constructed, get was interested in the expression of photograph the expression of pain, and
married and act as emotion. He wondered if, innately, told them to place their hand in a bucket
a step-father to his humans all pull their muscles in similar of frogs to witness their disgust. At the
wife’s three children. ways when they smile and grimace. most extreme end, he instructed them
However, a deeply Landis planned to illicit emotional to behead a live rat with no training and
disturbing childhood responses in his patients through tangible minimal instruction. One-third of the
appeared to have cues and document their facial muscle participants agreed willingly, but for those
deep roots, as after movement to see if a common pattern who refused he simply decapitated the rat
separating from his existed. His belief was that simply in front of them and made them watch.
wife and losing his job, asking someone to imitate an emotional Despite Landis going the extra mile
David took his own life expression would not be the same as a to capture the authentic emotional
aged just 38. genuine reaction, and so his cues were responses, he couldn’t find any common
designed to evoke them organically. pattern of facial expressions in his results.

74 PSYCHOLOGY NOW
 10 UNETHICAL PSYCHOLOGY EXPERIMENTS

MILGRAM SHOCK EXPERIMENTS

Just how far can authority force us to go?
In the wake of World War II, members of
the former Nazi Party were put on trial
and defended their heinous actions by
claiming that they were simply following
orders. A little over a decade later, one
Yale psychologist named Doctor Stanley
Milgram became increasingly interested
in the role of authority and obedience on
morally questionable acts, and in July 1961
he began a series of experiments to see just
how far obedience could go.
His experiment involved three
participants: a ‘student’, ‘teacher’ and
‘experimenter’. The teacher’s role was to ask
the student questions based on memory,
and if he failed to answer correctly to apply
an electric shock as punishment. The
voltage would be increased incrementally
from 15v, clearly labelled as safe, to 300v,
clearly labelled as dangerous, to beyond to
450v. If the teacher wavered on delivering
the punishment, the authoritarian figure of
the experimenter was there to prompt them
to continue.
The role of teacher and student was
supposedly randomly assigned between
two volunteers, but in reality it was rigged
to place the genuine volunteer as the
teacher and an actor as the student. The
shocks themselves were also artificial, but
the fake student was told to scream out in
pretend agony following a shock. Despite
protestations and signs of visible distress
from the volunteers who reluctantly
electrocuted the student, over half of them
delivered what they believed to be a shock
of 450v purely because they were under the
instruction of a respected authority figure.

THE STANFORD
PRISON EXPERIMENT
A meticulously designed study that swiftly devolved into anarchy
Do positions of authority corrupt us? And
how easily can our individual identities be
stripped away? Questions such as these
inspired one of the world’s most
controversial psychologists, Dr Philip
Zimbardo, to build a mock-up prison in
the basement of Stanford University’s
psychology department building and
populate it with young innocents. The
Stanford Prison Experiment would
randomly divide half of the 18 volunteers
into guards and the other half into prisoners,
and over the following six days it would
morph into one of the most absurd studies
ever conducted.
At the beginning of the experiment, the
‘prisoners’ were arrested, stripped of their
clothes and possessions, and locked behind
They started blowing whistles in the middle
of the night and soon escalated to making
the prisoners do push-ups as punishment
– sometimes with a guard’s boot planted on
their back.
The prisoners lashed back, staging a
rebellion on the second day by piling their
mattresses against the bars and refusing to
leave. But once they had been subdued, the
guards became worse: they removed the
prisoners’ mattresses, made them urinate and
defecate in buckets, and then locked them in
‘the hole’ – a small, dark cleaning closet that
was too small to sit in – for hours at a time.
Several of the prisoners suffered emotional
breakdowns and had to be removed from
the study, which was brought to a close after
six days. It was scheduled to last two weeks,
© Getty Images / DrAfter123

barred doors. The ‘guards’ were given a
uniform and minimal instructions, save
that they were there to keep the prisoners
in check. It didn’t take long for some of the
guards to begin to relish their new roles.
but after Zimbardo’s girlfriend witnessed
the experiment, she spoke out against its
inhumanity. According to Zimbardo, 50 other
witnesses had viewed the experiment prior
to her and none had raised any objections.

PSYCHOLOGY NOW 75

BREAK UP
WITH SOCIAL
Step away from the Likes, the intrusive algorithms
and the life comparisons, and discover the benefits of
disconnecting from your digital life
ebruary 2020 marked 16 years
F since Facebook was launched.
Originally called TheFacebook,
the service was designed to
be used by Mark Zuckerberg
and his fellow Harvard students. It then
expanded to other colleges and universities,
and eventually, in 2006, to everyone over the
age of 13 with an email address. Today, there
are around 2.5 billion monthly active users.
Nearly 1.7 billion people log in to Facebook on
a daily basis, and there’s a good chance that
you’re one of them. Add to that Instagram and
WhatsApp (also members of the Facebook
family) and you’re giving over a lot of your
time to the hugely influential conglomerate.
There are many reasons why you may use
social media: to catch up with friends, to read
news from your favourite brands, to send
Reclaim the
time to do
something for
yourself
76
BREAK UP WITH SOCIAL MEDIA
WORDS JULIE BASSETT
messages, to interact with common interest
groups or to keep up to date with events
in your local area. These are all perfectly
good reasons to use social media, but how
often do you pick up your phone with no
real intention and scroll mindlessly through
your news feed out of habit? These social
networks keep you coming back for more.
The ‘reward’ system of a Like gives value to
the content you post, which in turn feeds
an in-built desire to put out more posts and
garner more Likes.
And yet, for all its benefits, there is a darker
side to social media, one that can have a
significant impact on our mental health and
wellbeing. The question is: do the positives
outweigh the negatives? Is it time to take a
step back from social media and find out?
One of the biggest problems with social
media is that it can overwhelm us – do we
really need so much information available
at our fingertips all the time? According to
the website NetAddiction.com, information
overload is described as ‘when you are trying
to deal with more information than you are
able to process to make sensible decisions’.
This is in no way helped by Facebook and
Instagram’s algorithms, which detect your
browsing habits and ‘helpfully’ suggest other
things you might like to see. Read one article
on a subject you want to know about, and
within minutes you’ll be bombarded with
suggestions of related pages, products and
articles. It can be mentally exhausting trying
to process all these different options and
tangents, to the point where you find yourself
unsure of what to do next, what to buy and
even how to think and respond. This ‘social
media fatigue’ is leading to more and more of
us opting to take a break from these networks.
A US survey from 2018 found that 42%
of Facebook users had taken a break from
checking Facebook for at least a few weeks or
more, and a quarter had deleted the app from
their phone. And in the UK, data showed a
slight decrease in the number of UK residents
who used Facebook between November 2019
and December 2019.
There are further negatives to our constant
social media interaction. For a start, our
online profiles aren’t truly reflective of our
real selves. We tend to curate the information
we post and only present the version of
ourselves that we want people to see. This
can be quite isolating; of our many hundreds
of online friends or people we follow, few
of them know us intimately in a way that
we can connect with them and share our
PSYCHOLOGY NOW

thoughts and worries. We’re more connected
than ever digitally, and yet far more
disconnected personally.
And then there’s the problem of
comparison. It can be much harder to feel
content and happy in your own life when
you’re presented with picture-perfect daily
insights into the lives of other people, who
always seem to be richer, happier, thinner
and so on. Despite being hyper-aware of
how much we want to control our own
online appearance, it’s easy to forget that
everyone is doing the same, and what we’re
comparing ourselves to is just someone else’s
presentation of how they want to be seen.
If you do make that conscious decision
to break away from social media, then what
can you expect? Well, at first, a kind of loss; a
worry that you’re missing out on something
(FOMO!), the fear that you won’t get invited
to events, or might miss out on the latest
work gossip. It will take a little time to build
personal connections back up outside of
social media, but the benefits of leaving social
media behind will surely compensate.
For a start, it frees up time. Rather than
mindlessly scrolling apps on your phone,
why not reclaim the time to do something
for yourself? Read a book, go for a run, hit
PSYCHOLOGY NOW
BREAK UP WITH SOCIAL MEDIA
the gym, paint a picture… all those things you
have probably said you don’t have time for,
despite spending an hour or more a day on
Facebook. These things will lift your spirits
and nurture your soul. Make actual real-life
dates to see friends and catch up over a good
meal. Phone people and have a chat, write
long letters, visit family – it can be refreshing
to step away from digital communication and
build strong, personal connections instead.
Having strong relationships and friendships
can help ease the symptoms of stress,
depression and anxiety.
When you’re on social media, you spend
a lot of time thinking about the lives of
other people, whether you know them or
not, which can inflame negative self-talk. By
stepping away from social media, you can
return focus to your own life. It gives you a
chance to think about your priorities and to
focus on your goals.
Of course, there may be genuine reasons
why you can’t or don’t want to give up social
media completely. You can still take a step
back and reap some of the benefits. For a
start, delete the apps from your phone so
your feeds are more than just a tap away.
Track the time you spend on social media
and set a personal goal to reduce your usage.
SLIM YOUR
SOCIAL
ACCOUNTS
Not quite ready to break up
with social media completely?
There are ways you can gently
step away while also keeping a
digital anchor. It’s important to
remember that you are in control
of your social media; you can
curate your own feed.
Facebook, for example, has
lots of controls. Set up a Close
Friends list and opt for any of
your updates to only be shared
with those contacts. Similarly, set
up a Restricted list, where you
can pop all those colleagues and
family members you feel obliged
to befriend, but don’t want to
engage with. Next, do a good
cull of your Friends list so you’re
only connected to people you
really want to hear from. You can
also opt to Unfollow (but remain
friends with) people. ‘Unlike’ the
Pages you’re no longer interested
in, and leave all the Groups you
don’t participate in. All this will
seriously slim down your news
feed and can help to make it feel
less overwhelming.
Similarly, on Instagram you can
create a Close Friends list. If
following an account makes
you feel bad, stop following it.
You are under no obligation to
do anything on social media –
only follow accounts that add
something to your day, and that
you enjoy seeing content from.
Turn off your notifications so you don’t have
© Getty Images / yokunen
the constant update alerts, and set aside
some days that are free from all social media.
Give it a go and see how it feels – there’s
a real world out there, waiting for you to
rediscover it.
77
 COGNITIVE BIAS

BIAS
Explore how the peculiarities of human
information processing influence our
perception of situations and events

WORDS PETER FENECH

A
s humans living in an ever-
changing world, we have
rather a lot to think about. We
make hundreds of decisions
every day, from simple
choices like what to eat for breakfast to
devising complex business strategies at work.
As we are bombarded by sensory inputs,
each providing new information to process,
we must draw on previous experiences
to recognise, understand and act on our
perception of the world. To do this, our brains
take shortcuts to enable rapid judgements –
known as heuristics – whereby we prioritise
certain parts of larger problems over others.
While this is a critical coping mechanism
to compensate for the limited processing
amplitude of the human brain, it can lead
to faulty thinking – errors in perception that
cause us to make assessments based on
subjective influence rather than real-world
information. This is known as a cognitive bias
– a deviation from rational, logical thinking
influenced by multiple psychological and
social factors.
There exists a variety of recognised
cognitive biases, each with the potential to
negatively impact on the economy of our
real-world decisions, with consequences
for our social and financial success. Here
we examine ten of the most widely
studied biases and how these habits
impact our perceptions.

78 PSYCHOLOGY NOW
 COGNITIVE BIAS

a deviation from rational,

logical thinking influenced
by multiple psychological
and social factors

PSYCHOLOGY NOW 79
 COGNITIVE BIAS

SURVIVORSHIP BIAS
The tendency to ignore absent information
and only ever plan for the best
It can be a challenge to consider
information that is not observable in
our assessment of a situation. Where
a person or object is not present,
humans will naturally focus on those
that we can see and form an opinion
based solely on that condition.
Survivorship bias refers to
situations where we make
assumptions based on the apparent
success of a group of objects or
people but fail to recognise that
our sample is not representative of
subjects that have been excluded.
Looking at data on injuries
sustained by car crash survivors,
we may conclude the worst injuries
occur when sitting in the front seats,
when in fact this data does not
include people who were sat in rear
seats and were killed. To say better
crash protection should be installed
in front seats would be a common
but clearly false conclusion.

HYPERBOLIC
DISCOUNTING
Immediate rewards don’t always
offer the greatest benefits, but you
are still more likely to select them
Willpower plays an important part in society and

ENDOWMENT is often seen as a measure of strength of character

EFFECT
The attribution of greater regard
for that which we already own,
independent of actual value
We can all find ourselves becoming sentimentally attached to
objects, even when there is no obvious reason to value them so
highly. The endowment effect describes a common situation
where people place greater value in something they already own
than something they are yet to acquire, due to an emotional bias.
In psychological studies, such as that by Kahneman, Knetsch
and Thaler in 1990, it has been regularly observed that
participants will demand a far greater price for something they
perceive as their property than the amount they are willing to
pay for something of equivalent value. It has been suggested that
this is a form of loss aversion – as a species we experience greater
anxiety in losing something than we feel pleasure from gaining an
equal reward, although the motivation is unclear.
An evolutionary suggestion is that in the past, natural selection
favoured humans who were less willing to part with property
when there was less choice of people to trade with to find a
better deal. In economics this can be problematic in the modern
day, as holding on to something unprofitable, such as inherited
shares in a failing company, is irrational and can prove financially
by our peers. However, the choice to accept a
smaller reward sooner rather than a larger return
in the future is a far more complex behaviour
than may be immediately obvious at first.
There is a tendency among humans to perceive
future rewards as less attractive, attributing less
value the more temporally distant this becomes.
We make inconsistent choices over time, even
when presented with the same information.
In evolutionary terms this can be explained
by the choices early humans would have faced
– with immediate risk, such as starving to death,
it made more sense to select instant solutions.
Today, however, where we need to think longer
term, such as saving for a pension, this can
be ineffective – worth remembering the next
time that you’re tempted to buy an
expensive pair of shoes.

80 PSYCHOLOGY NOW
 COGNITIVE BIAS

the clustering illusion is centred around

the human predisposition to see events
closely distributed in time as related

CLUSTERING
ILLUSION
How we interpret groups of events
can affect our ability to predict
future probabilities
Sport and gambling are two activities that are most obviously
affected by cognitive biases and are two of the most
studied. This is largely due to the great influence individual
perception can have on our ability to see patterns in events
and predict future outcomes.
The clustering illusion bias is centred around the human
predisposition to see events closely distributed in time as
related, when in fact such events are random. The most
famous example of a study of this effect is a 1985 investigation
carried out by psychologists Gilovich, Vallone and Tversky,
of Cornell and Stanford universities on the ‘hot hand fallacy’
– the belief that in basketball a player is more likely to score if
previous attempts to do so have been successful.
CONFIRMATION
While confidence can improve performance, this incorrect
assumption is largely caused by an overestimation of our BIAS
ability to predict random events, something that is actually
impossible. When we have little information to rely on (a
Our process of gathering information
small sequence of attempts at something) we assume events to form our opinions is not as
will be more spread out, so when a cluster occurs, such as a
string of successes, we perceive it as non-random. This makes
impartial as we may believe
us overconfident in predicting such a sequence will continue
While we like to believe that we are open-minded and observe
for future attempts.
all of the available information on a subject before drawing
a conclusion, the reality is that this doesn’t always happen.
Confirmation bias is a flaw in how we collect, process and recall
information, which suffers from a tendency to favour that which
confirms pre-existing beliefs.
Since decision-making falls back on experience and
preconceived ideas, it can be uncomfortable for us to reject what
we think we already know and accept a new truth. We therefore
pay greater attention to data that reaffirms our beliefs and ignore
facts that question them. This can have significant implications
in areas such as the medical profession, where a doctor
diagnosing a patient may recognise initial indicators of an illness
and fail to seek, recognise and act on other diagnostic markers
that may disprove their hypothesis. On the other hand, multiple
doctors observing the same information but with opposing
preconceived ideas may draw very different conclusions due to
their unconscious choice to dismiss disaffirming facts.
With an influence in stereotyping, confirmation bias can make
us see patterns in data where there are none and fail to see
those that are present in new information.

PSYCHOLOGY NOW 81
 COGNITIVE BIAS

AVAILABILITY
HEURISTIC
The bias towards recent, easily
remembered information when
assessing importance and
relevance in new situations
Memory recall is a critical brain function, yet we experience
so much sensory input that we rely on mental shortcuts
to identify familiar stimuli. The availability heuristic, first
described by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, is the
process of unconsciously prioritising most recently acquired
information, biasing assessments of a situation towards that
which is most easily recalled.
Research has shown how participants overestimate the
relevance of information that they are able to easily remember,
even if this is a first impression of the broader situation. The
likely thought process is that we assume if information is
STEREOTYPING
readily available to recall it must be more important than that While it may be associated
which does not quickly come to mind. While cognitively useful, with discrimination against
the implications for judicial decisions, education-curriculum
design and learning performance are significant, where the
minorities, stereotyping does have
methods for conveying information in a lesson and then an innocent cognitive function
demanding recall in an exam situation are not compatible.
Stereotyping is one of the most recognised cognitive
biases and carries with it many negative connotations.
The stereotyping of people often results in the feeling of
judgement within the subject group, and there are sinister
implications for unreasonably assuming all members of
that group are the same. However, as with many biases,
there is a heuristic component that allows for the rapid
identification of people, places and objects.
You might find yourself instinctively asking a person
dressed in an airline’s uniform for help with flight
information, for example, assuming that they will be
an expert. This stereotype provides a rapid solution to
a potentially complex real-world problem. With such
social categorisation we learn to identify people less as
individuals and more as part of a social group. We may be
aware of this or it may be a subconscious process – known
as explicit and implicit stereotyping respectively.
As a type of confirmation bias it can be difficult to
challenge our own beliefs about a group. This explains
how easy it is to link emotional responses to our
stereotypes (develop a prejudice) and in turn alter
our social behaviour (discriminate against a group).
We naturally seek characteristics that reinforce our
assumptions.

gambler’s fallacy is the incorrect reasoning

that after a series of repeated events, such as
scoring red on a roulette wheel, a different
event becomes more likely
82 PSYCHOLOGY NOW
 COGNITIVE BIAS

RISK COMPENSATION
Does perceived safety yield increased complacency?
Every decision we make is a process of
weighing up costs and benefits. If we
deem the potential costs too high to
justify an action, we may decide not
to engage in it. Risk compensation is a
hypothesised mental adjustment
whereby we take greater risks when
perceived safety is increased, thereby
nullifying those safety measures.
Closely associated with this theory is
Professor Sam Pelzman, who suggested
road safety strategies are useless, since
with increased protection comes
increased risk taking. While this has
been widely disputed, another study by
Gerald J S Wilde noted decreased traffic
deaths in Sweden after a change in driving
side. However, once drivers became
accustomed to right-hand driving, fatality
rates increased, an effect termed risk
homeostasis – the balancing of perceived
and actual danger. This is likely due to
our predisposition to seek actions that
will yield the greatest reward with the
least effort, a trait that poses a challenge in
hazardous workplaces. Recurrent training
is often required to maintain safety.
Knowledge of risk compensation can
also help in marketing, as a safe online
marketplace can encourage sales.

GAMBLER’S
FALLACY
An opposite effect to clustering
illusion, this bias also results in faulty
expectations about future events
Gambling creates complex responses in humans. There is a clear
emotional investment in the outcome of a bet, yet there are more deep-
seated psychological processes at work. Gambler’s fallacy is the incorrect
reasoning that after a series of repeated events, such as scoring a red on
a roulette wheel, a different event becomes more likely – scoring a black,
for example. This is opposite, yet related to, the hot hand fallacy, arising
from a misperception about small sample sizes, where we assume shorter ANCHORING BIAS
series of random occurrences yield similar results to longer sets. Where
a winning or losing streak is encountered, we expect an inverse event to
Even business-savvy people
create balance. Tversky and Kahneman called this the representativeness can fall foul of this bias
heuristic – comparison to previous experiences of event sequences.
In reality, where events are discrete, one will not affect the probability
towards initial information
of the other occurring. Suggested biological causes for the false belief
that they will are the stimulation of parts of the frontal and parietal lobes As other cognitive bias examples have demonstrated,
of the brain involved in decision-making, judgement and humans rely heavily on impressions of a situation in
reasoning – zones attributed to increased risk-taking order to quickly make assessments. However, anchoring is
after experiencing a loss. The bias is sometimes another shortcut that can prove inefficient in the modern
dubbed the Monte Carlo fallacy after a famous world. With this bias, we are prone to fixing on the first
night of roulette piece of information that we receive and then using this
losses in 1913 in as a basis for judging all subsequent facts. The common
the casino of the example is being given a lower-than-expected price for a
same name. product and immediately accepting this while missing out
on potential better deals elsewhere.
Another Tversky and Kahneman investigation suggested
that we often incorrectly adjust expectations from the
anchor, affecting our judgement. Even with experience and
when armed with awareness of anchoring in action, it can
© Getty Images / akindo

prove difficult to avoid, influencing multiple decisions of a

financial, social or professional nature. While it is possible
to illustrate the effects, it has proven a challenge to pinpoint
the greatest psychological causes.

PSYCHOLOGY NOW 83
 THE BENEFITS OF BOREDOM

THE BENEFITS
OF

From childhood onwards, we’re

encouraged to chase boredom
from our lives. However, research
is showing that this much-
maligned emotion is actually
crucial to our wellbeing

WORDS JULIA WILLS

dler
an
Ch
im
ored to death. It’s so boring, it’s ©J

B like watching paint dry…

Few emotions get such
a bad press as boredom.
Uncomfortable and
unwelcome, it makes us feel lethargic and
restless at the same time. Lurking in dull tasks
at work, tedious meetings and slow-moving
checkout queues, when we become trapped
in it we wriggle mentally, desperate to escape,
reaching for our mobile phones for a fix of
excitement and distraction.
The unwelcome emotion
The word itself only entered our language
as recently as 1852 in Charles Dickens’ Bleak
House, yet it’s fair to say that the feeling of
glum sluggishness has probably always been
with us, albeit under different names. Ennui.
Existential dismay. Melancholy. It’s possible,
of course, that our earliest ancestors may
have been too busy hunting, gathering and
simply staying alive to worry about whether
things could be a bit livelier, but once we felt
safe from sabre-tooth tigers and starvation,
boredom took root, universal and unwanted.
Seneca felt a sense of disgust at the constant
JULIA WILLS
WELLBEING JOURNALIST
Julia Wills studied psychology at
Oxford. However, it’s as a journalist
and children’s author that her
interest in using our imaginations has
flourished. She is passionate about
helping people of all ages nurture
their inherent creativity.
WWW.JULIA-WILLS.COM
repetition of things, and called it nausea. Early
Christians termed same-old, same-old ‘the
noonday demon’ or acedia, and theologians
warned that the devil would make work for
boredom’s idle hands. Fiction brims with
bored heroes: Jack Torrance’s cabin fever in
The Shining certainly pepped things up for
everyone else, while Scarlett O’Hara famously
became “so bored she could scream.” And
nothing has changed. In fact, boredom
feels less welcome than ever nowadays.
Technology has contributed to its prevalence

84 PSYCHOLOGY NOW
 THE BENEFITS OF BOREDOM

by making our working lives more repetitive

and duller, but it has compensated us too,
with a huge range of digital distractions to
chase the doldrums away. Apps, computer
games, social media, email, Snapchat,
WhatsApp. We have an armoury to repel
boredom because we still don’t like it. And I
mean, really don’t like it.
A recent study conducted by Professor
Timothy Wilson at the University of Virginia
asked people to sit alone with their own
thoughts and without any distractions.
Not only did Professor Wilson discover
that people found it uncomfortable
to simply sit and think, but almost
half of the subjects chose to give
themselves mild electric shocks
– shocks that they had previously
found unpleasant – just to liven
things up a bit. Having
‘something’ happen, it
seems, even when that
something is painful and
bad, was preferable to
nothing happening.
Of course, it’s easy to see
how this carries into the real
world. Drug addiction, gambling,
overeating, excessive drinking,
risk taking, vandalism, rioting and
even ‘thrill-kills’ have been linked to
chronic boredom. And this dark side
to boredom appears to affect certain
personality types more.

Only boring people are bored?

Research carried out by John Eastwood
at York University, Canada, has identified
two types of personality that suffer most
from boredom. Those people for whom the
everyday is underwhelming and mundane,
which leaves them seeking thrills; and
anxious people who already find the
world too exciting and whose instinct is to
withdraw. However, as Eastwood points out,
this latter group discover that dull isolation
isn’t the happiest of places either, and the
ensuing boredom prompts them to seek out
more excitement again.
In each case, boredom seems to act like
an inner thermostat, registering a feeling
of discomfort with the status quo, and
triggering people to seek out stimulation
we have an
armoury to
THE BRAIN ON BOREDOM
Functional imaging experiments reveal that boredom is felt in our
insula – the part of the brain that lies near the bottom of the cranium
and close to the brainstem. Researchers have discovered that it
plays a role in the perception of pain and in translating sensory
information into emotional feeling. Research done at the University of
Kentucky recorded how the insula responds in people with different
personalities. Through MRI scans, the team discovered that thrill-
seekers showed strong and rapid responses to arousing stimuli in
their insula, while those lower on the sensation-seeking scale showed
an increased activity in the anterior cingulate – that bit of the brain
that regulates emotions. All mammals are thought to have insula,
which may go some way to explaining those pacing polar bears in
cages and the way dogs will chew to seek stimulation if they are kept
in crates for too long. Doctor Deborah Wells of Queens University,

repel boredom Belfast, discovered that classical music reduced bored behaviour in
elephants at Belfast Zoo. She and her team then went on to discover

because we that other animals’ boredom levels were also reduced by music,
seeming to curtail their frustration at being confined.

don’t like it
PSYCHOLOGY NOW 85
 THE BENEFITS OF BOREDOM

and to be curious again. Which, perhaps,
gives us the first hints as to why it has evolved
as a human emotion in the first place.
Emotions tend to protect, warn and
unite us. Fear signals the need for fight,
flight or freeze. Joy and sadness strengthen
social relationships, foster empathy and
cooperation. Shame keeps us acceptable to
the group after a transgression. So, it only
seems logical that boredom should have a
useful role too. It turns out, it has several.
The kindness of strangers
Better still, recent research into boredom
has shown that it can lead us to think about
others more, and go on to stimulate more
altruistic behaviour. Wijnand van Tilburg,
at the University of Limerick, investigated
the link between boredom and prosocial
behaviour, and discovered some refreshing
results. In a world that tends to associate
boredom with aggressive and destructive
behaviour, van Tilburg instead found that it
catalysed people into positive, empathetic
behaviour. He discovered that boredom
caused people to look for meaning in their
lives – an effect that outlived the length of the
time of the boredom – and led to an increase
in socially beneficial activities, such as
donating blood.

Wake up and smell the roses

Peter Toohey, a classics professor at the
University of Calgary, explains in his
truly fascinating book Boredom – A Lively
MAKE BOREDOM
History how the emotion can wake us up
to ourselves. In his far-reaching study, he YOUR BUDDY
explains that boredom comes in two main
flavours: ‘situational boredom’, the sort you
endure on a tiresome car journey or during
a deadly dull meeting, the sort that escalates
into Jack Torrance’s axe-wielding mayhem; WATCH THE GRASS GROW
and ‘the boredom of surfeit’, Seneca’s bugbear, Studies in biophilia show that idling away time in nature boosts both
born of excessive food, drink or repetition, our physical and mental wellbeing. Feel the wind on your face. Listen
and making us feel ‘fed up’.
to the birds singing. Forget the endless to-do list and connect with
In the case of a boredom of surfeit, Toohey
describes the work done by the psychologist the world around you.
Robert Plutchik, who concludes that just as
disgust warns us away from signs of disease
and sickness, boredom acts in a similarly
protective role, in steering us away from toxic WINDOW SHOP
social situations.
This is something supported by Eva
Visit unfamiliar shops and indulge your curiosity. Who’d wear those
Hoffman in her book How to be Bored. She rainbow-striped shoes? Who’d spend that much on a dog’s bowl?
highlights how our busyness culture thrives Who’d go out in that bright-blue suit? Imagine what the lives of those
in our digital and competitive world, and other shoppers might be like.
depletes us. It’s hard to simply step off the
treadmill and just reflect. Yet boredom
enables us to do precisely this. She points
to the ancient Greeks who considered this
downtime as ‘a therapy of the soul’. They KEEP A BOREDOM DIARY
maintained that ‘we cannot be fully human Write down your thoughts when you’re feeling antsy and listless. Does
without thinking about what being human something in your life seem to need changing? What might that be?
means’. When we let our minds wander and And what steps might you take to make things better?
invite that sense of frustration, it can tell
us important things. Perhaps, then, it is no
wonder that the world’s great faiths indulge
contemplation and meditation, enabling us to
recalibrate our spiritual satnavs to keep us on WALK
course for a more fulfilling and generous life. Walking has been associated with problem solving
and creativity since the Roman Empire. Put away your phone, and let
your feet walk and your mind ramble.

it only
seems logical DAYDREAM
that boredom Whether watching the clouds out of the window or simply listening to
a piece of new music, let your mind drift. Where does it take you? You

should have a may well be surprised by fresh ideas and solutions to problems that
just seem to pop into your mind.

useful role
86 PSYCHOLOGY NOW

Boredom is also an essential seeding
ground for creativity
A recent experiment by Doctor Sandi
Mann, a senior lecturer in psychology at the
University of Central Lancashire, showed
surprising results on how a period of
boredom could galvanise lateral thinking. She
asked volunteers to copy out the telephone
directory for 15 minutes before being asked
to come up with as many uses as possible
for a plastic cup. Compared to the control
group, who hadn’t been copying out the
numbers beforehand, the ‘bored’ group were
significantly more creative in their thinking.
Her findings make you wonder about the
seemingly mundane lives of some of our
greatest creative thinkers. For example, the
Brontë children, brought up in a parsonage
in Haworth, hemmed in by the Yorkshire
Moors and stifled by Victorian society.
Their response to such a curtailed life was
to invent imaginary worlds, such as the
African kingdom of Glass Town, and write
stories about them in tiny books the size of
matchbooks. It seems likely to me that the
tedium of their early lives helped spark the
creativity that led to some of the world’s most
beloved literature.
Or there’s the novelist Anna Sewell. In
declining health and largely confined to bed
PSYCHOLOGY NOW
THE BENEFITS OF BOREDOM
between 1871 and 1877, she dictated the text
of Black Beauty to her mother. The resulting
book remains not only a children’s classic
but is also responsible for the more humane
treatment of horses.
The painter Henri Rousseau was rather
patronisingly nicknamed ‘Le Douanier’ (the
customs officer) because of his boring day job
when his art was first exhibited in the salons
of Paris. Yet, his pictures of fantastical scenes,
lavish jungles and ferocious animals remain
astonishing to this day. He never travelled
and explained that his pictures were inspired
by visits to the hothouses at the Jardin des
Plantes where, tellingly, he looked at the lush
greenery and, “it seems to me that I am in a
dream.” A dream? A daydream? The sort of
mindset you might have when there’s little
else demanding your attention?
And then there’s Einstein. His remarkable
insights often arose when he was aimlessly
playing the piano, looking at art or sailing.
In fact, as the theoretical physicist Carlo
Rovelli, author of Seven Brief Lessons in
Physics explains, Einstein loved to loaf. As a
young man, he took a year off high school
with no particular aim other than to indulge
both his curiosity and imagination, and this
‘making room for idling’ (while allowing the
knowledge he’d acquired to simply simmer
up into fresh ideas) remained with him for life
and blossomed into his Theory of Relativity.
Switch off and tune in
However, the work of journalist Manoush
Zomorodi bears this out too. In her book
Bored and Brilliant, she definitively sets the
record straight on just how much we need
to be bored. “When our minds wander,”
she discovered, “we activate something
called the ‘default mode’, the mental place
where we solve problems and generate our
best ideas and engage in what’s known as
‘autobiographical planning’.” This, she says, is
how we make sense of the world, ourselves
and our goals. Allowing our minds to wander
leads to new connections between things,
new ideas and new directions. It also gives us
the time to make sense of things, particularly
social encounters.
However, in our 24/7 online world, this
‘nothing time’ has rapidly filled with the ping,
swipe and tap as we check our phones, our
Facebook ‘likes’, Snapchat or tweet. And what
does that do to us?
Zomorodi started the Bored and Brilliant
project – a programme of seven steps, or
exercises, that develop people’s capacity
for boredom in tandem with reducing their
technology usage to investigate whether
switching off their devices could catalyse
creativity. More than 20,000 people signed
up, actively reducing their digital exposure
and tuning in to inner quiet.
At first, she found the results rather
disappointing. Participants had, on average,
only shaved six minutes from their baseline
daily phone usage. But on discussing her
findings with Doctor Malia Mason, a cognitive
psychologist, a bigger picture emerged. Was
six minutes really insignificant? Moreover,
what were the participants actually saying
about their experience? And it was here
that Zomorodi discovered something both
surprising and refreshing: 70% of participants
felt they had enough time to think. After
freeing up their downtime, individuals
reported solving problems, finishing projects
and generally being more productive.
Authors wrote. Painters painted. Goals were
achieved. In a nutshell, people flourished.
How surprising then that boredom has
such a silver lining. Yes, it’s uncomfortable,
but so is physical pain and perhaps, like
pain, it is telling us that something needs our
attention. And that rather than avoid it at any
cost, boredom – if we indulge it – can actually
help us personally, creatively and socially.
By flipping us out of autopilot, it gives us the
© Getty Images / holaillustrations
chance to steer our own directions again, and
who knows what we might discover?
So, do excuse me if I sign off from all
this ‘thinking’ and pop to the DIY store for a
pot of paint. Watching it dry never felt
so inspiring…
87

YOUR BRAIN
What happens inside your
head when you are listening
to your favourite tunes?
rains are complex, as is music,
B so teasing out the neurological
response to melodies is
something of a challenge, but
researchers across the world
have been working to demystify the baffling
science behind it.
The first components of music to be
processed by the brain are the basic sounds –
pitch, length and volume. From this, the brain
then teases out melody and distinguishes
between different instruments. This
information is then compared to memories,
establishing whether the incoming sound is
familiar and revealing any linked emotions.
All together, the processing leads to a
response, whether that’s switching the song
off or starting to dance. And if you move, that
feeds back into your brain again, affecting the
experience even further.
Some of the complexities of the brain’s
response to music can be revealed by
people with damage or injury to their brains.
By seeing what happens to the ability to
process music after the brain is injured in
a certain place, and by observing how that
improves as the brain heals, scientists can
start to piece together which parts of the
brain are involved. This is aided by
advanced imaging technology, such as
functional MRI scanners, which can monitor
88
YOUR BRAIN ON MUSIC
ON
WORDS LAURA MEARS
the activity in different parts of the brain in nervous system, which comes hand in hand with
response to music.
One major revelation from this kind of
work is that music is separate from language.
Aphasia is the medical term for a neurological
disorder that results in difficulty speaking. It
can happen as a result of a brain injury, like
a stroke, and makes it challenging for people
an increase in heart rate and deeper breathing.
Researchers looking into exactly what triggers
this think that it might have something to do
with surprise; unexpected shifts in the music are
particularly good at setting off this response.
The urge to tap your foot along to a strong beat
is often irresistible. It was previously believed that
to find the words that they need to express our movements in response to music reflect how
themselves, but strangely it doesn’t always we perceive that it was created – a tapping foot
interfere with their ability to sing. Similarly, imitates a drummer’s pedal, for instance – or our
people with a stammer may struggle with mood upon hearing the music. However, more
speech but can sometimes sing a song recent research suggests that tapping your foot
without hesitation. may influence the way you perceive the music,
Around 1 in 20 people is tone deaf, or helping your brain to process what you’re hearing.
‘amusical’, and has trouble identifying the Researchers have an interesting way to
notes in a tune. Brain scans have revealed describe this phenomenon – they sometimes
that the white matter in the area involved refer to it as a ‘brain itch’ or an ‘earworm’. Some
in processing sound is thinner in these
individuals, indicating that it could be less
well connected than the same pathways in
their musical counterparts.
Good songs can make your hairs stand on end,
and this is thought to be triggered by the way that
our brains are wired. Music taps into the parts of
the brain involved with emotion and reward, and
listening to certain tunes can light up the same
areas tickled by food and even drugs. At the same
time, music seems to decrease the activity in the
areas of the brain involved in fear. Getting goose
bumps is linked to arousal of your autonomic
PSYCHOLOGY NOW
 YOUR BRAIN ON MUSIC

songs seem to get stuck in people’s heads more

often than others, but there is not a simple
formula that determines catchiness. Researchers
working in the field have noticed that catchy
songs tend to have short, repetitive sections, and
PROCESSING MUSIC
they also often have some connection to the
listener. A similarity to a song that you already
know, or a cultural connection – such as lyrics
that you can relate to – both help to get a tune Different areas of your brain come
stuck in your head. Ultimately, though, a song that
PARIETAL LOBE
together to handle rhythm, melody, This region links incoming sound
is catchy to one person might not be for another.
This is down to acoustics. If you sing in a big lyrics and emotion information with the other senses,
room with plastered walls, the sound travels a such as vision.
long way before it reaches an obstacle, and a lot
of the vibration is absorbed. In a bathroom, the LIMBIC CIRCUIT
room is smaller, and the tiles or glass reflect the The hippocampus, amygdala and
sound back at you in all directions. This creates
PLANUM TEMPORALE
reverberation. The result is that the sound is
other central structures deal with This area deciphers complex
louder, and the multiple reflections help to even memory and emotional responses sounds, picking out rhythm, timbre
out any tiny mistakes in your voice. The size of to music. and patterns.
the shower cubicle also has a part to play – lower
frequencies tend to be amplified more than
higher ones, making the voice sound richer.
People have been making music for millennia,
FRONTAL LOBE INSULA
and the oldest known instruments date back The front of the brain coordinates This is part of the cerebral cortex
42,000 years. They are bone and ivory flutes, your emotional and behavioural and is involved in recognising
discovered in a cave in Germany alongside responses to the music. familiar tunes.
other early human art and ornaments.
However, it’s generally believed that music was
around a long time before the first instruments,
as people used their voices to make melodies.
AUDITORY CORTEX SUPERIOR
Being able to produce music could have helped This part of the brain receives the TEMPORAL GYRUS
with social bonding, an idea that is sometimes sound input from the ears, and This region specialises in stringing
described as ‘vocal grooming’. These kinds of works out the pitch. sound information together, keeping
cultural advances are thought to have given our
species an edge over our human-like cousins,
track of lyrics and melody.
including Neanderthals.

Good songs
can make your
hairs stand
on end
© Getty Images / Nadine_C

PSYCHOLOGY NOW 89

GRADES
OF
Whether you’re struggling with losing someone close
to you or coming to terms with the death of someone
who wasn’t, grieving is a very personal process
reud once wrote that grieving
F was a natural process that
should not be tampered with.
In reality, dealing with losing
someone dear to us is one of
life’s hardest challenges. The process we
go through is different for everyone, and
sometimes help can be necessary as we try
to navigate it.
Grief can also be complicated. Perhaps the
person we’ve lost wasn’t as dear to us as we
would have ideally liked (if at all) and we’re
confused as to how we should feel or react.
Alternatively, we may be mourning a pet we
regarded as a family member but others can’t
fully comprehend our devastation.
“The process of grief is unique and how we
express it also varies culturally; some people
will be left feeling they are not grieving
properly or meeting societal expectations
of how they should be doing this,” says
psychologist Ingrid Collins, the director of
the Soul Therapy Centre in London. “But
there is no right or wrong way, it is a very
personal thing. This is even more the case
if a bereavement has added complications.
Suffering the loss of someone from a
90
GRADES OF GRIEF
WORDS SARA NIVEN
dementia-related condition for instance,
involves a grieving process while the
person is physically alive. This can be more
harrowing than mourning an actual death, as
the grief is experienced in conjunction with
the feeling of being in limbo.”
Stages of grief
The five stages of grief were first identified in
the book On Death and Dying by Elisabeth
Kübler-Ross in 1969. She categorised grief into
five distinct stages: denial, anger, bargaining,
depression and acceptance. Although
these sound as though they naturally run
consecutively, it is not uncommon to skip
stages, get stuck in one or go back and forth
between them. The relationship you had with
the person you’ve lost and the circumstances
of their death can also influence how you
progress through them.
Denial
This is a first line of defence against
overwhelming emotions. People will say
or think things along the lines of, ‘This isn’t
happening/they will walk through the door
any minute/the doctors must be wrong’.
When someone dies suddenly and
tragically, denial is very understandable –
it is hard to come to terms with a person
being absolutely fine one minute and not
here the next. However, it is a common
reaction regardless. People have talked
about calling a recently deceased person’s
phone for example, even though they are
aware they cannot answer. During this
period, you may still be in a state of shock
and not feeling much at all besides disbelief
and numbness.
Anger
As reality emerges, so too can anger. This can
be directed at anyone, including the person
who has died. If we felt angry with them
while they were alive, the emotion can feel
particularly overwhelming.
“Anger can be a reaction to the fact
somebody can no longer interact or share
their feelings with the deceased person,”
explains counsellor Pauline Couch who
runs the Step4ward Counselling Support
and Training agency in Dorset, UK. “That can
compound any sense of that experienced
when the person was alive, leading to
PSYCHOLOGY NOW
 GRADES OF GRIEF

feelings of guilt and missed opportunities

to sort the relationship out. It can also turn
inwards so the person is angry at themselves
as well as the deceased.”

Bargaining
We replay events repeatedly in our head,
wishing certain situations or circumstances
could be changed – that if ‘such and such’
hadn’t been the case, the death could
have been prevented or delayed. If your
relationship was not ideal, you may
also berate yourself for not reaching
out to resolve issues before it was
too late.
“This is incredibly common – I
regularly hear people talk about
if only they had done this, that
or the other,” says Collins. “From
a young age, we believe we are
omnipotent, and as we grow
some of that leaves us but there
is often still a lingering sense
that we should be able to control
things, even the circumstances
and timings of a death, which very
clearly we can’t.”

Depression
Although depression is generally seen as
something that is helpful to be diagnosed and
treated, after a death, overwhelming feelings
of sadness, not wanting to get out of bed or
not feeling up to the demands of daily life, are
a natural stage in the grieving process.
With the right support and the passing of
time, we start to function normally again.
How long this takes varies. Complicated grief
– when someone is still experiencing these
difficulties many months, even years later,
whereby they have lost all motivation and/
or even wish they had died too – is another
issue and worth seeking medical help for.

Acceptance
The final stage of the grieving process
represents coming to terms with our loss.
This doesn’t mean we won’t still feel sad
or have bad days, rather that we recognise
someone is not coming back and our
emotions start to stabilise as we adjust to a
new reality without them.

you
may berate
yourself for
not resolving
issues
PSYCHOLOGY NOW 91
 GRADES OF GRIEF
HELP IS ON HAND
If you are struggling with loss, or dealing with any aspect of unresolved
grief and need support, in addition to one-to-one counselling there are
other support systems available to you:
* Cruse Bereavement Care and Cruse Bereavement Care Scotland
(www.cruse.org.uk) is the United Kingdom’s largest bereavement charity
and provides free counselling.
You will additionally find details on its website of places to contact
for help in specific circumstances, such as grieving for someone with
dementia or after a suicide.
*Winston’s Wish (www.winstonswish.org) offers support for children,
young people and their families after the death of a parent, sibling
or significant carer. Parents can access free professional advice for
supporting a grieving child.   writing it, their anger lifted and instead they
*Pet owners can contact the Pet Bereavement Support Service run by
the Blue Cross (8.30am-8.30pm) on 0800 096 6606,
www.bluecross.org.uk/pet-bereavement-and-pet-loss
*Cats Protection also offers a Paws to Listen service with trained
volunteer listeners on 0800 024 9494, from 9am-5pm Monday to Friday.
Grieving when there are
things left unsaid or done can
be additionally difficult
92
Some stages of the grieving process
will be more relevant to certain situations
than others. There may be very little of the
denial or bargaining stage for the relative of
someone elderly who dies peacefully after
a long and happy life, and is now considered
‘at peace’. Conversely, those close to
someone who dies young or very tragically
could spend a long time in both, and
struggle for years to reach acceptance.
Sometimes anger over a senseless death or
a strong desire to change what happened
can be harnessed into a driving force by
relatives who campaign for a change in law
or seek to hold someone accountable for
their loss.
The stages are not a blueprint, more a
pathway that can be stepped off, walked
backwards at times or deviated from. We
are also individuals, dealing with different
situations and circumstances in our own way;
some people show a lot of outward emotion
as they grieve, others very little.
No regrets
Grieving when there are things left unsaid
or done can be additionally difficult.
“Regret is the lousiest thing to be adding
to grief,” confirms Collins. “Depending on
their views, some people may seek relief
in these kinds of circumstances by visiting
a professional medium, others can find
help in the form of therapy. When clients
have unresolved issues with someone who
has died or a longing they’d done or said
something, it is important to try to process
this to move forwards.”
A ‘no send’ letter is an exercise sometimes
suggested by counsellors. This can include
anything you wanted to say and couldn’t
express or didn’t get the chance to, be it
anger, betrayal, hurt or love. This can be a
very effective tool in enabling people to
move on.
One client in therapy reports writing a
letter to a deceased parent they felt upset
with, explaining why. They initially intended
to put the envelope in the coffin but after
were able to put their feelings to rest at the
same time as their parent.
Another option is what therapists refer to as
the ‘Empty Chair’. For those comfortable with
role playing, it involves speaking to a chair
as though the person you want to address is
sitting in it. In some circumstances, you may
consider swapping chairs and replying from
the other person’s perspective.
Delayed grief
Sometimes we experience grief a long time
after a person’s death but that doesn’t mean
we don’t face the same pain as if they’d just
died yesterday. This can be hard for others
to understand, and they may not show the
PSYCHOLOGY NOW

same empathy as they would for someone
experiencing a recent bereavement.
“I had a very dear friend I hadn’t seen for
decades due to circumstances and many
years later found out they had taken their
own life,” recalls Collins. “They were someone
in the public eye and I later ended up reading
a book about them – it wasn’t until then that
my grief fully hit me.”
If you haven’t seen someone for many
years, finding out they have died can be
a shock. If they represent a specific time
in your life that has now passed, you may
find yourself mourning part of yourself in
addition to the person. Their death can also
highlight the upset of any past fallouts or
separation the two of you had.
Grieving for a pet
“Losing a pet can be as devastating as losing
a relative or close friend for a pet owner, as
there is often a very strong bond there and
pets are part of, or sometimes a person’s only,
family,” says Diane James, Pet Bereavement
Support Service manager at national pet
charity Blue Cross.
“It’s important that people take the time to
grieve a pet, as with any loss, and we fully
support understanding employers who
offer bereavement leave to allow time for
pet owners to come to terms with their loss.
Every year we are contacted by more than
12,000 owners who have been left devastated
and struggling to cope after losing a pet.”
As counsellor Pauline Couch, points out,
animals can often play a vital role in some
people’s lives as a source of comfort, in
addition to companionship.
“Some people have animals to support
them emotionally around issues such
as anxiety, low mood, low self-esteem or
debilitating illnesses,” Couch explains. “Once
that pet dies, it can leave the person feeling
unsupported and very alone. I have had
many clients who have lost family members
and coped with those well, but when their pet
died it felt even bigger, because their support
was no longer there to help them through the
grief and pain.”
Losing an estranged relative
One in five UK families are affected by
estrangement according to UK charity Stand
Alone, while a US study reported that 10%
of mothers had no contact with at least one
adult child.
Not having any contact with a parent
might appear to make their death easier to
come to terms with but it doesn’t necessarily
work that way. We have still lost part of our
heritage and will likely mourn any possibility
of an apology or reconciliation. There will
also be the pain and loss experienced by
other family members we do have a close
relationship with to factor in.
PSYCHOLOGY NOW
GRADES OF GRIEF
Even if you were not estranged, a
complicated relationship with a parent can
still be highlighted when they die. Jayne
Harris lost her father a year ago and says
grieving alongside her siblings was a
difficult process. “My dad had seven
children by two marriages and his
relationship with each of us was different.
One son refused to come to the funeral,
while another was so upset at my father’s
death, he struggled to go back to work. On a
personal level, I found my dad tricky to deal
with; he’d say hurtful things sometimes and
could be very critical.
“Even so, I underestimated the impact of
his death. In the funeral home I wanted to
hug his body, even though I had sometimes
held back from that when he’d been alive. It
brought up a lot of childhood issues and in
talking about his life with others who’d known
him, I gained a better understanding of why
he was the way he was and wished there
were things we’d discussed. My brothers and
sisters were all affected so differently, and my
experience of him as a father didn’t quite fit
anyone else’s.
“Since his death, I’ve experienced anger,
guilt, regret and a deep sense of loss, both
for the father I had and the one I’d ideally
wanted. It took his death to know there was
love between us. Ironically, I feel it more now
than when he was alive.”
When you really didn’t like someone
It may not be a good idea to shout it from
the rooftops at their funeral but the simple
fact is that not everyone deserves to be
mourned by you to the same extent as a
loved one – if indeed they deserve it at all.
If someone maliciously made your life a
misery, abused or generally mistreated
you or was simply not a very nice person,
there is nothing wrong with you or the
need for guilt if their death just leaves
you feeling relieved or indifferent.
Not speaking ill of the dead
does not need to mean speaking
good of them if you genuinely
have nothing positive to say.
If others feel differently, then
it is just about respecting
that and a personal
decision as to if you
attend the funeral. If you
do, out of respect for
other people (if not the
deceased), the best
course of action is
either to keep quiet
or say something
neutral but truthful,
such as being sorry
for their loss or it
being hard to find
the right words.
PAWS FOR
THOUGHT
Danielle Tanner is a veterinary nurse
in the UK. She lost her beloved
Labrador, Taz, nine months ago and
says it is hard for some people to
understand the bereavement felt by
pet owners.
“Taz was my best friend and went
everywhere with me from the
moment I got him as a rescue dog.
My friends, family and co-workers
who knew what he meant to me were
fantastic and when I cried at work,
I had sympathy and understanding.
The pain is still very real and I am
lucky to work in a profession where
people know first-hand how much an
animal can mean.
“However, nobody expects you to
need any time off work as they would
a human relative. Colleagues gave
me allowances such as not having
to speak to the public that day or
dealing with any ‘put to sleeps’ for
a while. But others who were not
animal people expected me to act
like nothing had happened. Some
assumed I’d immediately replace him
or felt I’d be okay because I have two
other dogs.”
Danielle says she had enough
support but if that hadn’t been the
case, she would have called the Pet
Bereavement Support Service run
by the Blue Cross.
“People need to know there
are places to turn and it’s
a helpline I’d like to be
© Getty Images/ Ponomariova_Maria/undefined undefined
part of. Something that
helped me was to have
some of Taz’s ashes
made into a ring.
The company who
did it treated it with
as much respect as if
he were human, which
meant a lot.”
93
 COMPLEX LOSS

COMPLEX
LOSS
Founder of @ThatGoodGrief, Rachel
Reichblum, talks about the complexities
of losing both parents in close succession,
and the different emotions she felt

WORDS RACHEL REICHBLUM

t was August 2017, and I finally she was admitted to the hospital to the day

I started to catch glimpses of my

old self. The on-top-of-it-ness. The
laughter at something small and
silly. The self I was before my dad
died after a ten-month-long diagnosis of
glioblastoma, a terminal form of brain cancer,
when I was 26 years old. It’s all a bit of a blur
she died on 7 December 2017, two days after
my 28th birthday.
Logic told me: they’re both your parents.
They both died of the same disease. You are
around the same age. Ergo, the loss you’re
feeling should be the same. The pain you’re
experiencing should be no different.
RACHEL REICHBLUM
FOUNDER OF
@THATGOODGRIEF

study found that a father’s death led to more

now, but I know I felt hope in those moments
that there was a chance I’d get to return to
my former self. That at some point, I’d get to
put all of this distraction, sadness and messy
thing we call grief behind me, to return to life
as a 20-something living in a big city.
In October 2017, my mum was diagnosed
with glioblastoma, the same form of terminal
brain cancer that offered my dad a shortened
lease on life, but a death with dignity and a
chance to say goodbye.
Their diagnoses are the end of similarities
about their illnesses and ultimate deaths.
Cancer ravaged my mum’s mind and body
immediately, rendering her mostly mute, and
incoherent when sound did leave her lips. It
was just a mere seven weeks from the day
What I didn’t see then, but can so clearly
now, is that grief is universal. Each of us goes
through life knowing we will watch people
we love disappear between now and the
day we, ourselves, die. But relationships are
completely individually experienced. Even
between the same two people: both find
different strengths, weaknesses, boundaries
tested, and love gained in the same
relationship two people share.
The death of my father was, is and forever
will be different compared to the death of
my mother. Nadine F Marks, Heyjung Jun
and Jieun Song conducted a study in 2007
on the death of parents and the impact
on the adult children’s psychological and
physical wellbeing. At a high level, their
negative effects for sons than daughters,
and a mother’s death leads to more negative
effects for daughters than sons. In short, the
results of the study suggested that people
should not underestimate the impact of a
child’s mourning on their wellbeing, even as
an adult.
How can it be that I feel so differently about
two people so consequential to my being
– both of whom make up 50% of my literal
DNA, who without either, I would not exist
as I am today? Biologically, I am as much my
mother’s child as I am my father’s. Why is the
loss so different?
I realise now it’s different because we live
in a world made up of much more than
biology. We live in a world filled with biology,

94 PSYCHOLOGY NOW
 COMPLEX LOSS

psychology, anthropology and sociology. My
biology argues the losses are the same. All
others would argue it makes perfect sense
that the loss then, as now, as forever, will
manifest differently.
Even in today’s evolved time, where we
have made leaps and bounds on progress
towards gender equality, mothers continue
to provide a range of financial, emotional
and consequential support to daughters and
FIVE UNEXPECTED
sons across the adult years. Although there
is certainly a level of attachment to one’s
father, empirical work guided by attachment
theory shows time and time again that it is
the mothers who are the primary attachment
figure for children.
Gender theorists have long suggested that
children are socialised from an early age to
identify with their same-sex parent, naturally
creating a sense of distance from the
opposite-gender parent. That has also been
validated in empirical evidence showing that
the mother-daughter intergenerational bond
is in fact the greatest in closeness of all within
the family unit.
When my father died, I lost my mentor, my
business partner and my biggest cheerleader.
When my mother died, two things happened:
I lost my best friend, my confidant and my
support system, but I also lost my space in
the world to be a child. Yes, I was 28 years old,
so hardly a child, but I was still someone’s
child. I found myself as this adult orphan.
The part of this whole experience that
I have trouble admitting even to myself is
this: I miss my mum more than I miss my

ASPECTS OF GRIEF dad. Two people, equally responsible for

propelling my existence into being and yet,
when my dad died, I told myself, ‘Well, at least
it wasn’t my mum’.
So, where to go from here? My dad’s
death was consequential. My mum’s death
IT’S NON-LINEAR compounds the impact of my father’s. My
Grief is non-linear. There’s no getting better, there’s just getting brother’s commitment to staying on the
through it. Over time, waves of grief will become more straight and narrow provides a moment of
relief that they’re both dead (this is a whole
manageable and expected, but the loss doesn’t just stop other story). And I miss my mum more in my
hurting one day. every day than I ever did my father. In short:
it’s complicated.
Singular or multiple. Before their time
or at their time. Expected or unexpected.
Regardless of how a person died, there are no
IT’S PHYSICAL stages to grief, or getting ‘over’ grief. There is
Grief not only takes an emotional toll, but a physical one, too. There are just going through it.
lots of studies on what grief does to your brain and your body,
including causing fatigue, chronic pain, weight loss or gain and
other physical symptoms. when dad
died, I told
IT’S BITTERSWEET
Memories of your loved one that reappear can often feel both bitter
myself, ‘at
and sweet. There is still joy in those moments, they’re just overlaid with least it
the sadness that the person you shared them with is no longer present.
wasn’t mum’
IT’S ALWAYS ON YOUR MIND
People often tip-toe around the topic because they’re worried they’ll
‘remind you’ of the loss. News to them: it’s always on your mind, no
matter what, even at a subconscious level.

IT’S UNIVERSAL
© Getty Images / Ponomariova_Maria

The greatest gift of grief is the potential for connection. Every single
person on this earth will experience grief at some point in their lives.
If you can bond over the deep emotional journey that is grief, the
connection is far more meaningful than chatting over sports or fashion.

PSYCHOLOGY NOW 95
 THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP

96 PSYCHOLOGY NOW

POWER
Strong personal connections in our lives can provide
much more than simply companionship; friendship can
shape who we are and enhance our overall wellbeing
riendship is the hardest thing
F in the world to explain. It’s not
something you learn in school.
But if you haven’t learned the
meaning of friendship, you
really haven’t learned anything.”
Those are the wise words of Muhammad
Ali, who understood both the importance
of friendship in our lives, as well as the
difficulty of putting what ‘friendship’ means
into words. It’s a mutual affection shared
between two people who care for and
respect one another. Your closest friends are
those you can rely on in times of need, who
you can laugh with, whose company you
enjoy and who you communicate with on
a regular basis.
Our concept of friendship changes
over time. As small children, it’s
not uncommon to make friends
with strangers in the park after
just minutes of sharing the
slide. Best friends can
change at school with
dizzying regularity.
In the social peak
of our teenage
years and
PSYCHOLOGY NOW
THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP
THE
OF
WORDS JULIE BASSETT & LAURIE NEWMAN
early twenties, friendships can be extensive,
part of a larger network of acquaintances and
connections to have fun with. And then, as
we get older, it shifts again. Our friendships
are refined as we navigate through our
working lives, marriages, children and
reduced social time. If we’re really lucky, there
might even be friends that make it through all
these stages of life, their stories interwoven
tightly with our own.
How we make friends
All of these different friendships that we
forge throughout our lives play a purpose,
and ultimately help to shape the person
we become. But they will all have certain
elements in common. We usually form
friendships based on two key factors: our
environment and our individual preferences.
We tend to make friends by being in the
same place, both literally and figuratively.
Our first friends tend to be those people that
we are at nursery or preschool with, or the
children of our parents’ friends. Throughout
school, most of our friends are also our
classmates, and later college friends, room
mates and work colleagues. We might meet
people through clubs and hobbies we take
part in. We are drawn to people who share
the same interests and who have similar life
experiences to ourselves, which is why most
of our friends are in the same environment
as us and broadly the same age. We also
gravitate towards friends who share our
ideologies and beliefs.
In addition, we select some friends based
on our own individual preferences. This can
overlap with our environmental situations,
especially if we’re actively pursuing an
interest and hoping to meet others in the area
who share the same interest. But thanks to
the internet, we can also ‘meet’ people who
share these same interests online, and over
time they can become true friends.
Types of friendship groups
Many studies have investigated the
different models of friendship that we may
experience. One such study, by Dartmouth
sociology professor Janice McCabe, found
that there were three distinct models of
friendship types. While her research related
to college students, it’s thought to likely be
representative of the wider population.
First there is the ‘Tight-knitter’, who is
someone with a very dense group of friends,
97
 THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP

who all know each other and are all closely ourselves means that we can get the most social network of a specific size. He set the
connected. It’s thought that this type of group out of our friendships. number of people we can meaningfully have
is excellent for social support, but can be a connection with at 150. Through extensive
quite fragile, with disputes between members How many friends can we handle? studies of both contemporary and historical
of the group affecting everyone and changing There may be limits to how many friends data, Dunbar found that 150 was consistently
the dynamics. we can sustain. According to British the maximum number a social group would
Second is the ‘Compartmentaliser’, who anthropologist Robin Dunbar, we’re reach before it either collapsed or split off into
has several clusters of different friendship hardwired to only be able to process a different factions.
groups. Most of us probably identify with
this category, having groups of friends
we’ve known since school, work friends and
friends from our clubs or hobbies. This can
Good friendships might
be a useful setup, as we turn to the different
clusters to meet different needs.
Last is the ‘Sampler’, who tends to have
even help you to live longer
one-on-one friendships with a number of
individuals, rather than groups of people.
This can make a Sampler feel somewhat
socially isolated and lacking a sense of
belonging. That said, Samplers are often quite
DIGITAL RELATIONSHIPS:
independent, not reliant on a group for their
self-worth or personal success.
Whether you prefer group interactions and
A NEW MODEL OF
events, or one-to-one chats over coffee, when
it comes to your personal style of friendships,
FRIENDSHIP?
the group that you most identify with can
tell you a lot about yourself. The type of
friendship style we’re drawn to is linked to
our own personality and behaviour, and If Dunbar is right and we can only handle 150 personal connections
identifying the types of friendships that we
at any one time, then where does social media fit in? We might have
have can reveal a lot.
Someone who is quite introverted is less hundreds or even thousands of connections on these networks. It’s
likely to have big groups of friends, preferring thought that the brain can differentiate between the online chats we
instead to have meaningful one-on-one have with acquaintances and our face-to-face social interactions,
connections. These can be less draining and but it still requires some of our cognitive power. This means that we
more manageable for those who like the could be expending some of our ‘friendship energy’ on these online
company of others in calmer environments
and who feel lost in big groups – even those
connections, rather than nurturing our physical friendships.
made up of friends. For someone who is Being online also takes up valuable time, leaving us with fewer
more extroverted, having the chance to meet opportunities to invest in our real-life relationships. This could, over
up with lots of friends at one time is exciting time, erode the strength of our face-to-face friendships. While social
and pleasurable, energising and enjoyable. media certainly has its place to help us feel connected, ensure that it
It might be that you like a bit of both – large
social engagements and smaller meet ups
isn’t taking away from your real-world relationships, as these bonds
with friends individually. Being true to have the greatest positive effects on your wellbeing.

98 PSYCHOLOGY NOW
 THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP

with more social support in their lives are

more likely to make it to an older age. The
results of some studies even suggest that
breast cancer survival rates are higher in
patients who have large social networks they
can depend on for support.

Friends with benefits

There are practical benefits to having friends
that can also impact your overall health and

This might seem a lot, and you’d probably
struggle to name 150 people off the top of
your head, but this is the total number of
personal connections that you could have in
your life. This figure comprises an estimated
five loved ones (such as immediate family
or best friends), 15 close friends, a further
50 friends, and our more casual friendships
make up the total of 150 meaningful contacts.
Taking the theory further, you then might
have some 500 acquaintances and 1,500
faces you can recognise. This is a range of
values, and depending on personality type,
you might have much lower numbers, or
have more people in the early circles and
far fewer as you expand outwards. This
whole theory is related to the ‘social brain
hypothesis’. Dunbar argues that the reason
primates have unusually large brain sizes in
relation to body size is in order to manage
these complex social systems – friendships
are cognitively demanding.
The matter of who falls into which of
these social circles often comes down to our
frequency of communication with them.
Those you make time for are likely to be your
closest friends. The less you communicate
with someone, the further outside your
meaningful contacts they are likely to be.
“What determines these layers in real life,
in the face-to-face world… is the frequency at
which you see people,” says Dunbar. “You’re
having to make a decision every day about
how you invest what time you have available
for social interaction, and that’s limited.”
Impact on health and wellbeing
Dunbar also stated in a later review that:
“Friendship is the single most important
factor influencing our health, wellbeing and
happiness.” It’s no surprise then that those
who are lonely are more prone to depression
and other mental health conditions.
But how can something as simple as
friendship have such a profound effect on
us? In part, it’s down to our brain chemistry.
Oxytocin is a hormone secreted by the
brain’s pituitary gland. This molecule is
often referred to by the somewhat twee
nicknames ‘the cuddle hormone’ or ‘the
love hormone’. Its effects are better known
in women, as oxytocin is essential in the
process of childbirth and nursing, as well
as helping to form the mother-child bond.
The same hormone is released in men too,
which is one of the reasons that skin-to-skin
contact is so encouraged when their child
is born. Oxytocin is an important factor in
building strong relationships, and enhances
bonding and loyalty to our partners. It is
also very important to our social bonding
and friendships as it plays a role in the
development of trust.
Another hormone that plays a role in our
friendships is progesterone. It’s also thought
when you feel emotionally close to a friend,
your progesterone levels are increased,
which leads to improved wellbeing, and
reduced stress and anxiety. It also helps to
create strong bonds between friends, which
is why you and your friends feel protective
of one another. According to the NHS UK,
stress can cause physical symptoms (such
as headaches, muscle tension and stomach
problems); mental symptoms (difficulty
concentrating, feeling overwhelmed,
worrying); and changes in behaviour
(irritability, sleep problems, changes in
appetite, avoiding people). Therefore, having
strong friendships in your life can help us
to manage these symptoms by improving
our stress control. The simple act of having
someone you trust to talk to when you are
worried or overwhelmed can have a big effect
on your wellbeing.
One study found that strong social bonds
can also help you to stay sharper as you get
older. Improved cognitive function in later life
has been observed in those with high-quality
social relationships and friendships. Added
to that, good friendships might actually help
you to live longer too. It’s thought that those
MALE VS
FEMALE
FRIENDSHIP
In general, there are some
differences between male and
female friendships, though the
overall benefits on our health
and wellbeing are much the
same. Male-to-male friendships
are often formed more around
a shared activity and tend to be
less intimate. However, they are
more robust, as male friends are
more likely to retain friendships
after a disagreement, for example.
Male groups of friends can be
more tribal, meeting up in larger
groups rather than one on one.
Female-to-female friendships
however, tend to be based more on
support, intimacy and connection.
Women are more likely to want
to spend one-on-one time with a
friend, to have time to chat and
communicate their thoughts and
feelings. Women tend to require
more communication with each
other to maintain a friendship,
and these relationships can be
more fragile if there is a dispute.
However, female connections are
emotionally stronger and the bond
is greater. This doesn’t apply to all
friendships, of course, since all our
connections are unique, but these
common traits have been observed
in a number of studies.

PSYCHOLOGY NOW 99
 THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP

wellbeing. For example, if you want to start a
new exercise regime, you are far more likely
to stick to it if you have a friend by your side.
Or if we see a friend getting positive results
from a new diet, we may feel more motivated
to follow their example. We’ve already
established that our brains are hard-wired
to release hormones that promote trust and
bonding in friendships, which means that
we’re more likely to mimic behaviours in
those closest to us.
This can have a significant effect on our
lifestyle. Whether the goal is to lose weight,
get stronger, eat better or engage in more
self-care activities, we’re far more likely to
succeed if we’re doing it with our friends. In
turn, these positive behaviours can help to
keep our stress levels in check, lower blood
pressure, maintain a healthy weight, sleep
better and much more. All of which improves
our health, wellbeing and mental state.
Of course, the flipside to this is that we are
just as likely to mimic negative behaviours
in our friends. If this is the case, it’s worth
considering whether such friendships are still
healthy – or do the negative habits they bring
into our lives inhibit our personal goals?
Another positive benefit of friendships is
that they teach us a lot about ourselves. We
often recognise certain traits in our friends
that we find attractive, and from that we can
start to build a picture of the kind of person
that we are or that we want to be. We often
select friends who represent the same values
as us, which helps us to validate our thoughts,
opinions and beliefs, giving us confidence
and self-esteem. Our friends see us as who we
truly are, as we’re less likely to put up barriers
or adopt a persona around those we feel most
comfortable with, which is very liberating.
With such positive effects to having good
friendships, it’s important then to nurture
those bonds with the people closest to us. It’s
said that losing a good friendship is akin to
the grief of losing a loved one or a break-up
with a romantic partner. Spend time with
your friends, message them to check they are
okay and show how much you value them,
and you will continue to reap the rewards of
the strong, positive friendships that you have
forged over the years.

LETTING GO OF FRIENDS
As we embark on life’s journey, we meet a lot of people along the way,
but having too many friends can be exhausting

Too often
O
ver the course of your acquaintances and life-long companions?
lifetime you will, without a And why should you hold on to some and
doubt, meet a lot of people. As not others?
we hold on we navigate our way through
life, some of these people The three types of friendships
to friendships we meet will end up becoming our friends.
Friendships can form when we meet people
According to Aristotle we have three types of
friendships: friendships of utility, friendships

that no longer at various stages of our lives, including when

we go to school and university, when we
of pleasure and friendships of virtue.
Friendships of utility are relationships that

serve us start a new job, or when we participate

in hobbies. But what really defines a true
friend? What are the differences between
have a mutual benefit to both parties and
they are the more functional out of the three.
For example, these could be a neighbour

GET TO KNOW YOURSELF

The one person who you need to get to know the most is yourself.
Spending some quality time in your own company is one of the best
ways that you can truly understand what makes you happy and what
makes your soul sing. When we have too many friends, we frequently
neglect our own problems as we become overwhelmed with everyone
else’s. We put our own problems and worries on the backburner – but
this is wrong and this is when things can get a bit too much. Take
a moment to organise and reflect on your own journey, and stop
worrying about everyone else. Why not take a walk to your local park
or spend an hour doing something you love solitary, such as baking or
making music.

0
10 PSYCHOLOGY NOW

that feeds your dog or a customer at work.
Friendships of pleasure form when someone
shares the same interests as you. Finally,
friendships of virtue are based on mutual
respect and compassion, and usually form
over a long period of time. These friendships
are based on the idea that you share similar
values and aspirations, and they can develop
from as early as school years. But how are
we meant to lead a balanced lifestyle with so
many friendship circles? And is it possible to
have too many friends?
Too often we hold on to friendships that no
longer serve us, which is why it is important
to take a step back every now and again to
re-evaluate and ask yourself whether that
friendship is of benefit to you. You have
to ask yourself some key questions: Is this
friendship making me happy? Is this person
worthy of my precious time?
Time to let go
Maybe you can identify a relationship that is
not making you happy and you frequently
leave their company feeling sad. Perhaps you
have a toxic friendship that leads to
arguments and constant negativity. We hold
on to certain friends for a number of reasons,
but a common one is because of time. If
we have invested significant time into a
relationship, we stick with it. But whether
you’ve been friends for one month or ten
years, if that relationship isn’t adding anything
to your life, why waste any more time trying
to fix it? Maybe you make an effort with
someone and this isn’t reciprocated – these
one-sided friendships can leave you feeling
exhausted. Like unnecessary objects in your
home, it is possible and even recommended to
cull your friends.
Less is more
Focusing on the people that matter the most
is a step in the right direction. We need to free
ourselves of the stress that is caused by
trying to people-please, and instead focus on
those people who make us happy. Choosing
to have fewer, more valuable friends leaves
PSYCHOLOGY NOW
THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP
LET IT
FIZZLE
OUT
Ending a friendship is never
an easy task, but if you have
identified a friendship that is no
you free from the unwanted pressure of longer serving you, then it’s one
trying to juggle your time between too many that needs to be accomplished.
people. Pause for a moment and think about One way of cutting someone out
how you feel. Do you feel as though you are of your life is by slowly reducing
spreading yourself too thin? Do you want to
invest more energy and time into people that
contact and the amount of time
matter to you? Then it’s time to have a reshuffle you are spending with that
within your friendship circle and direct your person. Start by not organising
attention to the people who actually benefit to meet up as frequently, and
your life. avoid texting back as often.
It might not be easy and you
The numbers game
When considering Dunbar’s stance that we will inevitably miss that person
have 150 meaningful connections, 50 friends, from time to time, but just keep
15 close friends and five loved ones, your true reminding yourself of why you’ve
friends who are there for you through thick decided to let go.
and thin are those you would include in this
magic number five.
Take a moment and think about these five
ultimate best friends, and ask yourself friends make you happy and concentrate
whether you are spending enough time with on building stronger bonds. Focus on these
them. Dunbar believes that one of the main small, intimate groups of friends and be
reasons we should declutter and refine our confident when you decide to walk away
friendships is so that we can ensure our time from the relationships that are no longer
is being shared in an effective and manageable working. You will find you will become
way. Having a small, intimate group of friends happier, more energised and better at
means that you can hone in on why these managing your time.
AVOID TOXIC PEOPLE
At some stage in our lives, we will inevitably meet someone toxic.
Toxic people are draining and negative, and often the kinds of people
who require too much energy and time. They are easy to identify
because they can leave you feeling anxious and sad. These are
the friends that we need to step away from. You can tell them your
intentions by simply explaining to them face to face your reasons and
© Getty Images / cienpies
walking away with your head held high. Be clear in the direction you
are going in and walk away from people who don’t make you happy.
101
 THE PLACEBO EFFECT

102 PSYCHOLOGY NOW

 THE PLACEBO EFFECT

THE

EFFECT
How do sugar pills and saltwater injections
trick the mind into healing the body?

WORDS LAURA MEARS

ugar pills ease depression, instance, if the staff reassured them that the

S
actually work?
colourful creams numb the skin,
and saline injections make pain
melt away. The placebo effect is a
powerful healer, but how does it

In the 1890s, Ivan Pavlov discovered

classical conditioning. His famous
experiments taught dogs to associate the
sound of a bell with the arrival of food. When
they heard the noise, they started to dribble
in anticipation. The same thing can happen
to us with medicine. We make associations
based on our experiences. If people take
aspirin for a headache, they start to associate
the shape and taste of the tablets with pain
relief. Replace the pills with a placebo and
the pain will still be lessened.
Placebos, also known as ‘dummy’ or
‘inactive’ treatments, are made from inert
substances like saline, starch or sugar. They
look and feel like the real thing but without
any of the chemical effects.
new cream would work, it did. But if staff told
them that the cream would increase their
pain, it actually made things worse.
The appearance of medicines can also shift
our expectations. We associate bold colours
like red, orange and yellow with a stimulant
effect, and blues and greens with sedation.
Change the colour of a tablet and it’ll change
what people expect it to do. Similarly, if a pill
costs more or comes in a branded box, we
expect it to outperform its cheaper or generic
counterparts. Even the name of the treatment
has an impact. One study found that putting
the word ‘placebo’ on a migraine medicine
called rizatriptan reduced its impact. Calling
a placebo ‘rizatriptan’ made it work better. Not
surprisingly, calling the real medicine by its
proper name worked best of all.
The placebo effect even works with
surgery. The process of cutting the skin open
and stitching it back together can help people
with knee pain, and fake operations can even

Great expectations
The whole experience of receiving treatment
can help us to feel better. One study gave
Replace the
people a painkilling cream for two days
and then replaced it with a placebo. The
pills with a
participants had experienced the cream
working, so they expected it to continue placebo and
helping. Also, the tone of voice of medical
staff and the information they give people the pain will
about what to expect during treatment can
change the way people respond. In this be lessened
PSYCHOLOGY NOW 103
 THE PLACEBO EFFECT

ALL IN THE MIND

Despite its complexities, the human brain is surprisingly easy to fool

Parkinson’s disease disrupts the brain’s ability to produce dopamine. One study in
2010 found that the placebo treatment for Parkinson’s could provide results almost
identical to those achieved with the conventional medication, the drug L-dopa. The
illustrations below represent a patient’s brain scans from this trial.
More
dopamine

UNTREATED MEDICATION PLACEBO

Less
dopamine

Absence of dopamine Almost normal levels Almost normal levels

of dopamine of dopamine

ease heart pain caused by angina. Nothing
actually needs to happen inside the body;
the sights and smells of the hospital and the
procedure of an operation can trick the brain.
The first neurobiological evidence for how
the placebo effect works came in the 1970s. A
study published in 1978 in The Lancet looked
at what happened when people received
a placebo painkiller after having a tooth
removed. To find out how the placebo effect
worked, half the participants were also given
the drug naloxone, which blocks the activity
of natural painkillers called endorphins.
In this study, naloxone stopped the placebo
tablets from working, but only when people
expected the placebo to help with their pain.
When we expect a tablet to kill pain, the brain
makes its own painkillers.
Current evidence now suggests that this
effect starts in a part of the brain called
104
the prefrontal cortex. This region handles can even make non-painful touching hurt, a
complex behaviours and planning. When we phenomenon known as allodynia. Reading
expect to feel better, it boosts activity in nerve about side-effects or looking diseases up on
pathways that extend into the spinal cord. the internet can shape what we expect to
MRI scans have shown that the placebo effect happen, and this affects the brain.
decreases blood flow in the parts of the spinal
cord that let pain signals through. Endorphins
triggered by taking placebo tablets help to
stop pain signals from reaching the brain. Change the
Does it ever not work?
The placebo effect works less well on people
colour of a
with Alzheimer’s disease, who often have
damage to the nerve cells in their prefrontal
tablet and it’ll
cortex. The effect can also be blocked by
placing magnets over the scalp, interfering change what
with nerve signals in the front of the brain.
Anxiety can also block placebo pain relief. people expect
Studies have found that simply telling people
their pain will get worse can make it worse. It it to do
PSYCHOLOGY NOW
 THE PLACEBO EFFECT

PLACEBO PATHWAYS
The placebo effect depends on two
separate sets of signals in the brain

PAIN REDUCTION CEREBRAL CORTEX

Brain scans have revealed that the The cerebral cortex is responsible for
cingulate cortex, insula and intelligence, memory and consciousness. It
thalamus – which are involved sends signals to the periaqueductal gray.
with the brain’s pain
circuitry – show reduced
activity during the
placebo effect. VENTRAL
TEGMENTAL
AREA
This structure in the
midbrain is part
CINGULATE CORTEX of the dopamine
reward system.
It sends signals
INSULA
to the nucleus
THALAMUS
accumbens.

NUCLEUS
ACCUMBENS
Dopamine is released in the
nucleus accumbens, helping to
dampen feelings of pain.

PERIAQUEDUCTAL
AMYGDALA GRAY MATTER
Images of the brain experiencing the The periaqueductal gray controls
placebo effect show that activity in the pain by making a natural painkiller called
amygdala (which is involved in fear and enkephalin, which sends pain-blocking
emotional responses) is decreased. signals towards the spinal cord.

PLACEBO IN THE BRAIN

The science behind what really goes on inside our brain when we take a placebo

The placebo effect is all in the mind, and it’s controlled by the parts of the brain that are responsible for managing
anxiety, reward and pain. The cerebral cortex controls the highest brain processes, like consciousness and intelligence.
The region at the front, known as the prefrontal cortex, handles complex behaviour, including our response to a placebo.
When we take a sugar pill believing it will help with pain, the prefrontal cortex passes messages to pain control neurons
called the periaqueductal gray. These send natural, morphine-like painkillers into the brainstem, triggering the release of
serotonin. More painkillers, known as enkephalins, then flood the spinal cord, where they block pain signals before they
are able to reach the brain. At the same time, dopamine streams into the brain’s reward system, helping to reduce the
perception of pain.

PSYCHOLOGY NOW 105

 THE PLACEBO EFFECT

The second part of the brain’s placebo

system is a chemical messenger called
cholecystokinin (CCK). It is produced when
we are anxious. Blocking its activity with
a drug called proglumide enhances the
THE NOCEBO EFFECT
placebo effect, as does calming anxiety with
the medicine diazepam.

Other observations While placebos can be incredibly helpful, they can also
Most of the work to understand the placebo
result in some unwanted side-effects
effect has focused on pain, but dummy pills
can affect other aspects of health and disease
too. People with Parkinson’s disease suffer The nocebo effect is like the placebo effect but in reverse. If we think
damage to nerve cells in a part of the brain that sugar pills are the real thing, then they can cause side-effects
called the substantia nigra. These damaged just like real medicines. It’s hard to study the nocebo effect, but in
nerve cells stop producing dopamine, and 2014 Sara Planès and her colleagues at the Grenoble University
this leads to problems with movement that
worsen with time.
Hospital in southeastern France gathered 86 studies together and
Placebo medicines can increase the reviewed the evidence.
amount of dopamine in the brains of people They found that symptoms of the nocebo effect tend to be non-
with Parkinson’s disease. If they expect to specific, like nausea, dizziness and headache. They also discovered
receive real treatment and think that they will that it affects women more than men, and people with depression
improve, dopamine levels rise on their own.
and anxiety are particularly vulnerable. The team were also able to
The immune system can also respond
to a placebo. In 2002, the Goebel research confirm that, just as with the placebo effect itself, the nocebo effect is
group at the University of Duisburg-Essen partly psychological and partly neurobiological.
in western Germany trained the immune Conditioning can make us expect side-effects, and while chemical
system using a flavoured drink. They changes in our brains can make pain feel better, they also have the
repeatedly dampened immune activity using potential to make it worse.
an immunosuppressant called cyclosporin A.
Each time they accompanied the treatment
with the drink. After the conditioning was
complete, they didn’t need the drug any
more. The drink was able to suppress the
immune system on its own.
In 2008, they repeated the experiment with
allergies. This time they gave antihistamines
with the flavoured drink. Incredibly, not only
did the drink make people feel better even

Reading
about side-
effects
or looking
diseases up on
the internet
can shape what
we expect to
happen, and
this affects
the brain
106 PSYCHOLOGY NOW
 THE PLACEBO EFFECT

when the antihistamines had been removed,

but it also reduced the activity of allergy-
inducing immune cells called basophils.
Every time we receive
We still don’t fully understand the placebo
effect, but there’s no escaping it. Every medical treatment, part of the
time we receive medical treatment, part
of the experience is psychological, and
medical professionals are already using this
experience is psychological
knowledge to help us get better.
There are two types of placebo. Pure
placebos do nothing chemical to the body,
like sugar pills or saline injections. Impure
placebos are treatments that do have
PLACEBOS IN TRIALS
chemical effects but not for the condition for
which they are being used. Antibiotics are an
example; they treat bacterial infections but
are often prescribed for flu even though it’s The placebo effect is powerful in its own right, but to date it’s been
caused by a virus. most useful as a way of testing new treatments. Studies of the
A recent survey of UK GPs found that, placebo effect have shown that receiving a tablet and expecting it
though few use pure placebos, three-quarters to work can be enough to make you feel better. So how do we know
prescribe impure placebos to patients at least
once a week. Examples can include giving
if a new treatment is actually working? The answer is to give half the
people nutritional supplements, probiotics, patients the real thing and give the other half a sugar pill that looks
antibiotics and alternative medicines. exactly the same, then compare the two.
Alternatively, it can entail booking patients This works best if neither the patients nor the doctors know which
in for non-essential tests. The most simple treatment they are getting, a technique called ‘double blinding’. This
option is just using the power of positive
way no one can be quite sure what to expect. If the people receiving
suggestion. There is an ongoing debate about
whether this is ethical, but similar studies in the real treatment do better than the ones on the sugar pills, you can
other countries have found that placebo use be sure that it’s not just the placebo effect at work.
is widespread. The more we
understand how it works, the
better we will be
able to harness
its power.

© Getty Images / DrAfter123

PSYCHOLOGY NOW 107

 WHEN EATING BECOMES AN ISSUE

WHEN

BECOMES AN

ISSUE
With 1.25 million people in the UK estimated to
have one, and hospital admissions on the rise,
we look at the issue of eating disorders

WORDS SARA NIVEN

ood and the act of eating can recognise if someone has one; it’s possible

F represent different things to

different people. Some may
view it as simply fuelling them
through the day. For others,
preparing and enjoying a meal is one of
life’s pleasures. But what if the normal
urge to eat became something to fight, and
food is seen as the enemy? Or if there is a
compulsion to down large amounts at a
time, but the guilt and regret that follows
consumes you for far longer than it took to
consume the food?
The mindset of someone with an eating
disorder can be hard to understand for those
who have never experienced this type of
mental illness. And that is exactly what it is,
as opposed to a fad or an attention-seeking
ploy, as some believe. Neither is it easy to
to have a serious eating disorder and be a
normal weight. Although girls and young
women aged between 12 and 20 are most
at risk, up to 25% of cases could be boys
and men, estimates Beat, an eating
disorders charity.
“Eating disorders can affect people of
any age or gender, any social or cultural
background,” confirms Tom Quinn, director
of external affairs at Beat. “Stereotypes
about who can get them mean it can be
even harder for everyone who needs
treatment to access it. While eating
disorders can be a way of coping with
feelings or situations that are making the
person unhappy, depressed or anxious, they
are not the fault of the person suffering, and
no one chooses to have one. Far from
SARA NIVEN
THERAPIST AND
WELLBEING JOURNALIST
Sara has experience counselling young
people over issues including eating
disorders, in addition to writing on the
subject for a range of publications.
seeking attention, people with eating
disorders will often do all they can to hide
their illness, and it’s common for them to
feel guilty and ashamed about what’s
happening. If you recognise the symptoms
of an eating disorder in yourself or anyone
you know, you should seek help as soon
as possible.”

108 PSYCHOLOGY NOW

 WHEN EATING BECOMES AN ISSUE

Complex causes
Hospital admissions for eating disorders
have risen by more than a third across all
age groups in the last two years, according to
latest figures from NHS Digital.
Although social media is often seen as
placing an increased emphasis on physical
appearance and portraying unrealistic body
ideals, experts agree it would be a mistake
to lay the blame on that. In reality, eating
disorders were around long before the
internet, with anorexia first observed and
recorded back in the 17th century.
“Eating disorders are extremely complex
mental illnesses and their causes are not
fully understood,” adds Tom Quinn. “What
is known is that people can be at risk when
they’re exposed to a number of factors,
including a genetic predisposition to
developing the illness, and environmental
factors that act as triggers, such as peer
pressure, stress or trauma.
“Social media is never the sole and direct
cause of an eating disorder. However, so-
called ‘pro-ana’ and ‘pro-mia’ content helps
perpetuate the illnesses for people already
suffering, and is easily accessible online.
It’s important to note that most of this
content is created and shared by
people who are unwell themselves,
so is not deliberately malicious.”
Certain personality traits have
been linked to eating disorders.
Researchers at King’s College
London identified five
obsessive-compulsive
traits including
perfectionism, inflexibility
and cautiousness. They
found women with anorexia
or bulimia were significantly
more likely to have shown
these traits as children.
Someone with all five was
seen as being 35 times more
likely to develop an eating
disorder compared to someone
who had none of the traits.
Sufferers of anorexia are also
more likely to suffer from
obsessive compulsive disorder

PSYCHOLOGY NOW 0
19

Eating
disorders
are complex
mental
illnesses
(22% compared to a general population rate
of 8%), while bulimia has been linked to high
levels of impulsivity and anxiety.
Types of eating disorders
When eating disorders are discussed, people
tend to picture someone very thin and frail.
In reality, anorexia nervosa, where someone
tries to keep their weight as low as possible
by restricting food, over exercising or a
combination of both, is the least common
eating disorder, accounting for around 8% of
cases, show statistics from Beat. The others
include bulimia, which makes up 19%, binge
eating disorder (BED) at 22%, and other
specified feeding or eating disorder (OSFED),
which accounts for 47%.
Bulimia involves binge eating followed by
the sufferer deliberately making themselves
sick, using laxatives, exercise or restricting
food intake to try to avoid gaining weight.
Binge eating disorder is similar, with upset
and guilt experienced after consuming large
amounts of food, but minus the purging.
110
WHEN EATING BECOMES AN ISSUE
MY SIX-YEAR BATTLE
WITH BULIMIA
Ruby Harris* tells her story of developing and
overcoming an eating disorder
“I was plump as a young child and clearly remember a teacher’s tactless
comment about my size leaving me feeling self-conscious. Although I
had slimmed down by the age of 14, life at home was difficult; my parents
divorced and my mother remarried a man I didn’t like, which caused
conflict. During that summer holiday, I drastically cut down on what I
was eating and, when I went back to school, friends commented on how
skinny I was. I didn’t believe them and decided I had to lose more weight
before everyone realised I was actually fat. My thinking and body image
became completely distorted. Not giving in to hunger, exercising as much
as possible, and a hollow, empty feeling felt like an achievement and a
comfort, as well as a form of control.
After months of seriously restricting my food intake, that gave way to
binge eating. My body was crying out for calories, but I was disgusted
with the fact I was putting weight back on and hated myself. Cycles of
not eating for a day or more were followed by eating large quantities,
then making myself sick or taking laxatives. During binges, I’d even eat
frozen food or bizarre combinations like cornflakes and custard. It wasn’t
about taste or enjoyment, more an overwhelming compulsion to cram
food down, without the ability to stop. I now wonder if it was related to
stuffing down anger and upset I didn’t feel able to express.
I didn’t know I’d developed bulimia, only that it wasn’t normal behaviour,
and eventually went to my GP to ask for help. This was back in the 1980s
and he didn’t seem to know what to suggest for a 16-year-old with an
eating disorder, other than an art therapy group for adults with various
mental health problems, which I declined. Now the area where I still live
has a specialist eating disorders unit, there is online advice and most
schools offer counselling services. I did find a book on bulimia, which was
helpful, and started counselling at college. One of the things that helped
me stop making myself sick was finding out stomach acid is really bad for
your teeth and erodes the enamel. Obviously bulimia was damaging my
body in lots of ways, but I’d always been proud of my teeth and thinking
of that was more effective when I was tempted.
It took time, but around six years after my eating disorder began, I
finally managed to break free from bulimia. Unlike unhealthy habits or
addictions, you can’t just give up or avoid food. Recovering involved
working on changing the damaging relationship I’d developed with it and
finding other ways to cope with difficult feelings and situations.
Today I am a normal weight for my height, I exercise in moderation and
eat normally, but tests have shown my eating disorder has contributed to
a higher risk of developing osteoporosis. I regret the years I wasted and
long-term effects, but I’m just grateful I was able to stop when I did.
*Name has been changed
PSYCHOLOGY NOW
 WHEN EATING BECOMES AN ISSUE

If you recognise that you or someone you

FIVE STEPS TO
ADDRESSING AN ISSUE
PICK THE RIGHT TIME AND PLACE
If you suspect a friend or family member has, or is at risk of developing,
an eating disorder, educate yourself on the signs and symptoms
beforehand. Choose a calm time to talk privately, avoiding mealtimes.
know is showing signs of an eating disorder,
it is important to get help as soon as possible.
The earlier treatment is sought, the better
chance of recovery there is.
Expert advice
Professor Janet Treasure is a leading
psychiatrist specialising in the field of eating
disorders. She has co-worked with patients
and their friends and family to provide
strategies to help support recovery.
Research published over the last two
decades has flagged up several important
factors for carers to be aware of:

Be well informed
It can be difficult to know
whether you’re sourcing reliable
CHOOSE YOUR WORDS CAREFULLY information. “Research in scientific
Focus on how they’re feeling rather than what they are (or are not) journals is carefully scrutinised
eating and their weight. If they get angry or defensive, don’t be put off although occasionally there can
or react similarly. be false trails,” she explains.
“Organisations such as Beat (www.
beateatingdisorders.org.uk) and
FEAST (www.feast-ed.org) are helpful
and may signpost local workshops or
TRUST YOUR INSTINCT training sessions.”
If someone denies they have a problem, keep an eye on them without  -
making it obvious. It can feel hard to take another approach, but it’s Avoid extremes
important to if you suspect something is wrong. It can be tempting to get frustrated
or angry with someone stuck in a
destructive cycle; we may wonder
why they can’t just stop behaviour
that is harming them and affecting
OFFER HELP TO GET HELP those who care about them.
If they admit to a problem, encourage them to see their GP as soon Alternatively, we may tip-toe around
as possible, offering to go with them or, in the case of a child or young them, inadvertently ending up
accommodating or normalising
person you are responsible for, make an appointment and take them. their behaviour. Professor Treasure

SEEK SUPPORT
If you think it would be easier for them to talk more anonymously,
or you need support yourself, contact the Beat Helpline on
0808 801 0677. There is also a Youthline on 0808 801 0711.

The most common eating disorder,

however, is OSFED, where symptoms don’t
fit neatly into one of the other categories.
Examples can include someone who has all
the symptoms of anorexia, but their weight
remains within a ‘normal’ range, or has
symptoms of bulimia but the binge/purge
cycles don’t happen as often as would be
typically expected.
A pre-occupation with and/or secretive
behaviour around food and noticeable
self consciousness when eating in front of
© Getty Images

others are just two signs that could indicate

someone may have a problem.

PSYCHOLOGY NOW 111

 WHEN EATING BECOMES AN ISSUE
advises guarding against veering
between being too critical or
overly protective and instead
providing a calm, consistent and
gentle approach.
  -
Positive role models
Researchers, including Professor
Treasure, identified three role models
for carers in terms of developing
helpful behaviour. These are called
‘dolphin’, ‘St Bernard’ and ‘herd of
elephants’, as she explains:
“The dolphin is used to portray a
wise, hands-off, but gently nudging
approach, and the dolphin’s smile
is also significant. As part of this
model, caregivers are taught
motivational interviewing techniques.
This uses a guiding style to elicit
reasons, and plans to support change
from the individual themselves.
The St Bernard mode represents
staying close to the individual to
provide warmth and nurture for
someone lost in the frozen waste and
isolation of an eating disorder and
promote the idea of hope for change.
The head to tail connection of
elephant herds is used to show how
important it is to work as a team,
both within the family and with
health professionals. In a herd of
elephants, leadership is not related
to dominance, all in the group show
respect for others and their collective
ability to solve problems.”
it’s
important
to get help
as soon as
possible
© Getty Images / Malte Mueller
112
A PARENT’S STORY
Georgina Norris’s daughter, Elizabeth, died at the age of 39,
after a 20-year battle with anorexia that started when she was
at university and involved more than a dozen hospital stays.
Describing her as a highly intelligent, witty and strong-willed
girl, Georgina says Elizabeth was offended by the idea that her
illness was the result of misguided vanity.
“Although she became conscious of her weight as a teenager
and decided to go on a diet, as an adult, she was adamant
that the illness had nothing to do with her appearance and
was almost insulted anyone would think that. Instead, she often
talked about feeling like she ‘took up too much space’.
“I’ve often wondered what made her vulnerable – she was
a lovely, very sunny child, much-loved and highly thought of.
But she did find it hard adjusting to the single-sex school she
transferred to at the age of 16, where some of the girls could be
quite catty and make personal comments.
“She was also a perfectionist who set herself high standards,
and nothing she did was ever good enough for her. When she
started playing the piano and taking grades, she immediately set
her sights on grade 8. When she achieved a first-class honours
degree at university, she would say that it wasn’t a ‘good’ first.”
Georgina says she first realised something was wrong when
Elizabeth wore a poncho to walk to a swimming pool on a
hot summer’s day and only took it off as she lowered herself
in. Although Georgina admits that as the years went by, they
eventually gave up hope of a recovery being possible, she
and her husband did all they could to provide support to their
daughter during her long illness, including attending a workshop
for the relatives of people with anorexia.
“I learned not to get pulled into the anorexia agenda. Elizabeth
would often ask me if she was fatter than when I last saw her,
and I had to start telling her I would not get involved in those
conversations because whatever I said wasn’t helpful either way.
If someone told her she looked ‘well’ or ‘better’, it translated
for her as ‘fat’. If you said she looked thinner, she would be
happy for a few minutes before returning to the mindset
of needing to lose weight.
“As a parent, an eating disorder can leave you
feeling totally helpless, and Elizabeth’s death
feels so needless. Of course when I see the
children of friends having worthwhile jobs,
getting married and having children I
am happy for them. But it also grieves
me that my darling daughter didn’t
experience these ordinary, normal
things and never will.”
PSYCHOLOGY NOW
 UNDERSTANDING NIGHTMARES

UNDERSTANDING

Why do we have bad dreams and

what can we do to stop them?
WORDS LAURA MEARS

ightmares are the scourge

N of the sleepy, but scientists

think that they’re just a
natural part of healthy
rest. Experts aren’t sure
exactly why we have them, but it might
have something to do with developing
connections inside our brains. Dreams and
nightmares may help with memory storage,
emotional processing or training for real-
life fight or flight situations. All three can
be stressful, so it’s no wonder that dreams
sometimes turn into nightmares. This
happens most frequently between the ages
of three and six, but nightmares often persist
into adulthood, especially in those of us who
are naturally anxious.
Nightmares, like dreams, happen during
REM. When in the REM phase of sleep, our
bodies switch on a protective mechanism
called sleep paralysis. The brainstem sends health affects their dreams. This is most but your own interpretation is likely to be
muscle-relaxing signals to the body, which pronounced in post-traumatic stress disorder, more valuable.
stop us acting out our dreams with our arms where the brain reruns past events during the Use a weekly tracker to record your
and legs. This is why we sometimes wake up night, but everyday stresses can also bleed sleep, including any bad dreams you have,
from a bad dream unable to move. Known into our sleep. because recording your nightmares could
as ‘old hag syndrome’, waking suddenly Keeping a regular bedtime and taking the help you to manage them more effectively.
from a bad dream can leave you feeling like time to wind down before bed can really One technique used in the treatment of
someone is pressing you into the bed. Luckily, help to get you into the right mindset for nightmares associated with PTSD is ‘image
the effect soon subsides as the brainstem restful sleep. You can reduce stress and rehearsal’. The idea is to practise visualising
wakes up. anxiety by exercising during the day and different endings to your nightmares during
For some, foods that alter body avoiding stimulants such as caffeine and the day. This gives your brain a bank of new
temperature or brain chemistry, such as nicotine in the run-up to bedtime, but one ideas to call on when you experience the
chillies, sugar and alcohol, can contribute to of the best things you can do to manage nightmare for real. It works best for recurring
© Getty Images / Natty Blissful

bad dreams. For others, it can be something
as simple as sleeping in an uncomfortable
position. Physical health problems, such
as a fever or a migraine, can also cause
nightmares, as can certain medications.
Many people also find that their mental
nightmares is to record and analyse them.
If your mind is trying to work through
memories, emotions and stressful situations
in your dreams, it’s possible that there’s
something to learn from them. You could
look up a generic dream meaning online,
nightmares, because they often end in the
same way.
Many people are able to work through their
nightmares on their own, and some even
learn to enjoy them, but if you’re struggling,
it’s important to reach out for help.

PSYCHOLOGY NOW 113

 DECIDING IS DIFFICULT

1 14 PSYCHOLOGY NOW
 DECIDING IS DIFFICULT
IS
DIFFICULT
How people make their minds up is
one of the most interesting, and best
funded, areas in psychology
WORDS EDOARDO ALBERT
t’s a big choice: buy the hybrid
I eco-friendly BMW i8 sports coupé,
which costs from £114,000 new, or
go for the Mercedes Benz S class
four-door saloon, starting at £76,000,
the preferred car of diplomats and high-
powered gangsters the world over. It’s the
sort of choice that, sadly, not many of us are
likely to face – and certainly not writers of
articles about psychology – but for BMW
and Mercedes Benz, knowing what factors
govern the decision making of their potential
customers is an important consideration in
their billion-dollar businesses, and one that
they, and other corporations, are willing to
invest serious time, money and effort into
investigating. This explains why the psychology
of decision making, in modern-day study, is
often subsumed into business schools. In that
respect, it is merely returning to its roots, for
the inquiry into why human beings make the
decisions that we make arose originally as part
of economics theory.
Economic roots of decision-making theory
As economists, beginning with Adam Smith,
started to investigate the mechanisms of wealth
creation and transfer in societies, it quickly
became an axiom of the nascent field of study
PSYCHOLOGY NOW
that people were rational actors when it came
to assessing and deciding their economic
behaviour. Remember, in the days before
social security, these could easily be life
or death decisions: for a medieval peasant
farmer, judging when to plant his crops could
mean the difference between a rich harvest
and starvation. In Victorian times, people
often had little choice but to accept difficult,
hard work in dangerous conditions as the
only alternative was the work house.
Faced with these choices, economists
assumed that people acted for their best
interests, and that they decided these
interests by a rational inquiry as to the costs
and benefits of their actions. So, when faced
with the choice between luxury cars that
would move them equally well from A to B,
they would naturally choose the cheaper,
and genuinely four seated (with space
for five), Mercedes Benz S class over the
significantly more expensive BMW i8, which
can shoehorn two short people into the back
seats if they don’t mind having their knees
up to their chins for the journey. However,
we know perfectly well that some people
would choose the BMW over the Mercedes
for a whole host of reasons, few of which have
anything to do with a cost benefit analysis.
115

How much you earn matters
Part of the explanation for this apparently
obstinate refusal by people to follow their
own material best interests was first provided
by the mathematician and physicist Daniel
Bernoulli (if the name rings a bell, Bernoulli’s
principle is one of the foundations of
aerodynamics and is often demonstrated
in classrooms by a physics teacher holding
two sheets of paper a few inches apart
and blowing between them, causing them
to move together). A genuine polymath,
Bernoulli made groundbreaking discoveries
in mathematics and statistics, including his
development of the idea of expected utility
in decision making. Bernoulli pointed out
that the sorts of decisions householders
made were not purely based on maximising
income, but rather depended on how much
risk the decision maker was prepared to take
with his money and how much they were
looking to make depending on their income.
For someone earning the average wage for
a writer, £10,000 per annum, an additional
£500 would be a very significant windfall.
But for a footballer in the Premier League,
who makes on average £50,000 per week, an
additional £500 would barely be noticeable.
Booms and busts
So with this addition from Daniel Bernoulli,
economists continued on their gloomy way,
predicting – or more often not – depressions
and booms while assuming that people
basically acted in their own best interests
for rational reasons. The problem with this,
of course, is that people are not entirely
rational, indeed far from it. A classic example
was provided by the banking crashes that
triggered the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Although people might think their money is
safe with a bank, the truth is that banks use
the money deposited with them to lend to
people who want to take out loans. In the
116
DECIDING IS DIFFICULT
normal course of events, this is not a problem,
as the money flows in and out of the bank at a
fairly constant rate. But suppose all the bank’s
How a
depositors, suddenly fearing that the bank
might go bust, all simultaneously demand decision is
the return of their money. No bank, ever,
could pay out to all its depositors at once: framed is crucial
they simply don’t have the reserves. Amid
the panic of the banking crash, depositors, all
looking to save their own nest eggs, ended up
in influencing
making the bank fail and, as a consequence,
they lost their money. A rational actor,
what decisions
knowing that this was the inevitable outcome,
would have waited. But people panicked.
There have been many similar irrational
are made
booms and busts through history, from tulip will throw the dice, as there is no downside.
mania, when a single tulip bulb went for 12 But suppose the rules of the game change.
acres of land, through the South Sea Bubble Now the person holding that bundle of crisp
in the 18th century, and right up to recent £10 notes says that you will win £100 if you
times and the Dot-com Bubble that occurred throw a three, four, five or six, but if you throw
in the 1990s. a one or a two then you have to pay them
£100. Would you still be willing to take the
Psychologists look at decision making gamble? What about if you only lost your
When faced with all this evidence of human money through throwing a one? Are the odds
beings as irrational actors, the time was ripe good enough then?
in the 20th century for a fresh, psychological
approach to decision making. This new
analysis was provided in seminal work
by psychologists Daniel Kahneman and
Amos Tversky. Kahneman and Tversky
demonstrated that people were far from
rational actors when it came to making
economic decisions, with their judgement
affected by a whole host of considerations
beyond simple costs and benefits. In
particular, Kahneman and Tversky argued
?
that people are averse to making a loss when
compared to making a gain. Thus, according
to this argument, winning £100 on the throw
of a dice suddenly becomes much, much less
attractive if there is a significant chance of
losing £100 if the throw goes against you. The
idea runs like this. Suppose you will win £100
if you throw a six with a dice. Naturally, you
PSYCHOLOGY NOW
 DECIDING IS DIFFICULT

How we frame a problem often

decides its solution
Kahneman and Tversky found that potential
losses weigh more heavily when making
decisions than potential gains.
The other major discovery they made was
that how a decision is framed is crucial in
influencing what decisions are made. In one
of their experiments, Kahneman and Tversky
put the problem in terms of a medical
dilemma. One group of people were told that
600 people with a very serious, ultimately
fatal, medical condition could be given two
possible treatments. With the first treatment,
200 people would be cured. If they chose the
second, experimental treatment, there was
a one in three chance that all 600 people
would be cured, but there was also a two in
three chance that none of the 600 would be
saved. The second group of people had the
same choice but it was framed differently.
They were told that the first treatment meant
that 400 people would definitely die while
with the second, experimental treatment,
there was a one in three chance that no one
would die and a two in three chance that
all the patients would die. With the choices
framed in terms of saving lives in the first about a possibility affect their decisions as to no connection to the outcome. So when
instance, and losing lives in the second its riskiness. Thus people tend to feel more estimating the price of a house, if people are
instance, most people in the first group chose frightened about taking a plane ride than given a random price and asked to estimate
the first treatment, thus definitely saving 200 they do when getting into their car, although how much more or less the real price is, they
people, but in the second group, where the a car journey actually carries a greater degree will tend to stay closer to this random figure
choice was framed as an option between of risk than a plane journey. than when people are asked to simply make
400 people dying and having a one in three Anchoring is the tendency that people an estimate without a random starting price.
chance of saving everyone, then the majority have to stay near a starting point, even Availability is an effect of how well we
chose the second, experimental treatment. when that starting point is random and has remember certain things. For instance, if you

Blink and decide

Thus how a choice is presented will affect,
quite fundamentally, the choices people
make. In the real world, decisions are not
usually presented in such a clear-cut, WHY TEENAGERS
quantifiable way, and they often require quick
decisions, sometimes before it is possible
to evaluate all the possible factors affecting
TAKE RISKS
the decision. Not surprisingly, we as human
beings are wired to make decisions quickly,
and the more urgent the decision the more
the choice is taken from conscious control. Teenagers are notoriously bad at risk assessment, from driving too
So, touching something hot triggers the V
fast through to drinking too much and experimenting with drugs. In
autonomic nervous system to pull your hand one study, psychologists asked people a series of questions including
away without any conscious decision on
your part. Back in our days on the African
whether it was a good idea to set your hair on fire and whether it was
savannah, the decision on whether to fight or a good idea to drink bleach. The answer to these and other questions
run had to be made quickly, based on a swift was supposed to be ‘No’, and teenagers did indeed say ‘No’, but it
evaluation of threat and risk. To help us make took them significantly longer to make that decision than adults. It’s
these quick decisions, the mind makes use not entirely their fault. These sorts of judgements are based on the
of shortcuts, which are called heuristics by
experience-based systems in our brains that mature later than other
researchers in the field.
parts of the brain: the ventromedial and dorsolateral areas of the
The shortcuts of decision making frontal lobe aren’t fully developed in young people. So next time you
Among these mental shortcuts are the see a teenager setting their hair on fire, reach for the fire extinguisher
affect heuristic, anchoring, availability and but remember: their brain is still developing.
representativeness. To start with the affect
heuristic, this is the way people’s feelings

PSYCHOLOGY NOW 117

 DECIDING IS DIFFICULT

have witnessed a car sliding off the road at

a local bend once, when seeing other cars
approaching the same spot you are likely to
overestimate the chance of them skidding off
the road too: a vivid memory of a particular
event makes us think that a repeat of such an
outcome is more likely than it actually is.
Representativeness is a nice word
for stereotypes. We’re all told to avoid
stereotyping and yet we all do it: in the
real world, it is very difficult to make the
sort of quick judgements often needed
without employing them. So suppose you
are interviewing Gary for the position of
university librarian and he walks in with a
copy of The Sun newspaper rolled up under
his arm. Gary would probably have to work
very hard to overcome the stereotyping
associated with reading The Sun and being a
university librarian.

Fast and slow decision making

Back in our African savannah days, the fast,
experience-driven decision-making systems
that we share with our primate cousins were
vital in helping us to escape predators. But
as human society and human beings have
evolved, a second form of decision making
has become necessary, one that is slower,
more deliberative and less instinctual than HELP IN A WORLD OF CHOICE
our ancestry would allow. This new (in
evolutionary terms but it would be tens of
thousands of years old), evaluative system
of decision making is not at all helpful when
deciding which way to run from a tiger, but it
We are bombarded by choices. In a supermarket aisle, a shopper might
comes into its own with the sorts of decisions see well over a hundred choices of breakfast cereal. Making the choice
that hunter gatherers and, later, pastoralists can be simplified by deciding that the decision will be based on one
and agriculturalists had to make: where to feature alone, such as price, so in that case you might go for the own-
go to find the new crop of jackfruit; how brand cornflakes. For buying something like a car, it might be better to
long to leave the cattle pastured on the hills
use an evaluative method, where you list all the desired features you
before the weather turns; when to plant the
new crop of barley. These are decisions that want the car to have, with ratings from +5 to -5, and you then look at the
require thought and evaluation. This newer potential cars and rate them according to these desired features. The
mode of decision making can also be used, choice will then fall on the car that accumulates the highest score.
after the fact, to assess how good our snap
judgements, made using the older neural
pathways, were. Having run and climbed a
tree because of the crack of a twig, one of our
ancestors might well have looked down from the top branches to laugh out loud at the Greater experience leads to swifter and better
sight of a porcupine bumbling along, minding intuitive decision making.
its own business. Decision making overall can be improved
by becoming aware of the different factors

Greater It takes time to decide

However, recent studies have shown how
affecting our choices, from the mental
shortcuts we use to make things manageable

experience leads our maturing brains, in particular the

ventromedial and dorsolateral sections of the
frontal lobe, can allow even snap judgements
but that also cut out otherwise viable options
(in the case of Gary, the would-be university
librarian, further questioning might have
to swifter and to be informed by previous learning and
experience. For example, an experienced
revealed that he found the newspaper thrown
on the floor and picked it up because, being
better intuitive doctor will often base his or her decision
on the seriousness of a patient’s condition
tidy, he did not want litter in the library);
to a greater appreciation of the value of

decision on fewer factors than a less-experienced

doctor, but their judgement will be made
properly evaluative decision making. After
all, it enabled our ancestors to find food, and

making more quickly and will be more accurate

than that of the less-experienced doctor.
kickstarted that greatest of all changes in
human history, the agricultural revolution.

118 PSYCHOLOGY NOW


HOW MUCH CAN YOU
TRUST YOUR BRAIN?
Our decisions are not always our own thanks to the
unconscious biases buried in our brains
BANDWAGON EFFECT
People follow the crowd, meaning
you might be more likely to vote
for someone because they have
more supporters even if they
don’t align with your views.
EMPATHY GAP
When we are being logical (cold), we
don’t understand how our decisions
would differ if we were emotional (hot).
Conversely, when we are emotional, we
don’t realise how much our decisions are
being influenced by emotion.
FREQUENCY ILLUSION
Have you noticed that when you learn a
new word you start seeing it everywhere?
Our brains have a habit of trying to see
patterns, so we notice things more if they
are interesting to us – like a new word.
OSTRICH EFFECT
Humans often (metaphorically) bury their
head in the sand. We choose to ignore
the bad things that are happening, like
not checking our bank accounts, rather
than tackle the problem.
OVERCONFIDENCE BIAS
Some people may be overconfident in
their abilities because of this bias and
as a result take greater risks in
decision-making, which may end
positively or negatively.
SCOPE INSENSITIVITY
Our brains are not very good at
understanding scale. If we hear a disaster
has impacted 200, 2,000 or 200,000
people, we react the same because we
can’t comprehend the larger numbers.
ANCHORING BIAS
We make our decisions from the first
piece of information that we learn about a
subject. This is why we are more inclined
to buy something when we see the original
price placed next to the reduced price.
SELECTIVE ATTENTION
Our attention is a limited resource, and
we have to direct it on things specifically
for it to work. Our brains filter
just an uncharacteristic moment. Someone
information in our environment to focus
on what is useful and ignores the rest.
PSYCHOLOGY NOW
DECIDING IS DIFFICULT
CONSERVATISM BIAS
Have you ever heard someone say,
“There’s nothing that will change my
mind”? That is conservatism bias. We
have a tendency to not update our views
when faced with new evidence.
FUNDAMENTAL
ATTRIBUTION ERROR
This is when we attribute the behaviour of
someone to a character flaw rather than
who snapped at you once is probably not
an angry person, but we think they are.
CONFIRMATION BIAS CHOICE-SUPPORTIVE BIAS
When you believe something to be When you make a choice, it is
true, you see evidence that supports probable you will look back on it
it, like when you think someone positively to rationalise your decision,
doesn’t like you, you are more likely to even if you see afterwards that there
notice when they’re ‘off’ with you. were better options.
NEGATIVITY BIAS
Negativity bias is when our minds react
more strongly to negative experiences
rather than positive ones. It makes us
more likely to turn down opportunities
because we can see the threats within the
choice rather than the advantages.
RESTRAINT BIAS
We overestimate our ability to resist
temptation. This means we think we won’t
eat a slice of cake at a party when we’re
trying to eat healthily, but many of us will
have overestimated our own willpower.
GALATEA EFFECT
This describes the power of self-
expectation. If you believe you will
succeed, you are more likely to be
successful, compared to if you believe
you can’t do something.
PROCRASTINATION BIAS
We tend to accept short-term reward
rather than wait for a better reward. We
know our coursework will be more worth
it in the long run, but we are still tempted
by the funny cat videos.
REACTANCE BIAS
If we are forbidden to do something, we
may have the desire to do that exact thing
in order to prove our freedom of choice,
like being asked not to walk on the grass
© Getty Images / smalvik / Nadine_C / katflare / Irina_Strelnikova / Dmi+T
or touch a piece of art.
SURVIVORSHIP BIAS
You see so many books every day, you
might think it is easy to publish. This is an
example of survivorship bias, as you have
not seen the many more that didn’t make
it to the publishing stage.
ZERO-RISK BIAS STATUS QUO BIAS
We prefer the elimination of all risk over
The status quo bias is our preference
a greater reduction in a larger risk
for things to stay the same. You might
(overall), like choosing to clean up a
revisit the same restaurant or purchase
small oil spill completely, rather than
the same brands just because that’s
using the same money to clean up a
what you have done in the past.
giant oil spill significantly.
119
 FIGHT OR FLIGHT

FLIGHT
FIGHT

120 PSYCHOLOGY NOW

 FIGHT OR FLIGHT
FIGHT
OR
The brain’s ancient threat-detection
system gets us out of danger at
lightning speed, but at what cost?
WORDS LAURA MEARS
T
he fight or flight response is
all-consuming. Your heart beats
faster, your breathing gets quick
and deep, your palms sweat,
and your mouth goes dry. With
fractions of seconds to react in the face of
danger, this is what gets you out of harm’s
way before you’ve even had time to think.
It’s an ancient self-defence mechanism that’s
hard-wired into the nervous system – your
body’s way of getting you ready for battle.
The body’s panic button is a walnut-sized
piece of brain tissue called the amygdala,
and its job is to monitor incoming sensory
signals for signs of threat. It is connected
to a larger brain area called the thalamus,
which acts as the brain’s sensory relay. The
thalamus gathers inputs from the brain’s
sensory processing areas and from the
internal organs, and the amygdala listens in.
When something doesn’t look quite right,
the amygdala has just seconds to get the
body ready to fight or flee, and this involves
synchronising all the organ systems to divert
resources to the muscles. The fastest way to
do this is to talk to the master controller of
the body, the hypothalamus.
PSYCHOLOGY NOW
The hypothalamus sits in the middle of the
brain, monitoring and adjusting everything
from temperature and thirst to appetite and
sleep cycles. It wires into the autonomic
nervous system, which sends electrical
impulses down through the spinal cord and
out into the body. It also has a direct line to
the pituitary gland, a long-range hormone
signaller that pumps chemical messages into
the blood.
The autonomic nervous system has
two parts, which provide opposing sets of
instructions to the organs. The sympathetic
nervous system revs the body up, whereas
the parasympathetic nervous system calms
it down.
Nerve signals move faster than hormones,
so the first part of fight or flight kicks this
system into action. When the hypothalamus
receives a danger signal from the amygdala,
it switches the sympathetic nervous
system on, which then sets off a cascade
of electrical messages that result in the
release of a neurotransmitter that’s called
noradrenaline. The muscles and organs
are on constant alert for this signal – they
have adrenergic receptors that can detect
121
 FIGHT OR FLIGHT

TOO MUCH OF A
GOOD THING

What happens if the fight or flight system won’t turn off?

The fight or flight response evolved to get us out of sticky

situations fast. But it’s only supposed to work on short timescales.
To boost muscle power in a time of crisis, the body has to borrow
resources from other areas; when the crisis is over, those areas
need their blood supply back. But what happens when the threat
doesn’t go away?
The fight or flight response gives way to the stress response. The
sympathetic nervous system calms down and adrenaline production
stops, allowing heart rate and blood flow to return to normal. In its
place, cortisol kicks in. Known as the stress hormone, cortisol can talk
to almost every cell in the body. Its main job is to change metabolism
and dampen lower-priority activities like growth, reproduction and
immunity. It does this by altering the release of reproductive
hormones, interfering with molecules used to fight infection
and changing the way that cells respond to growth
factors. This helps to make sure that there’s energy
available to deal with the stressful situation, but it
can cause side-effects, changing digestion, sleep
patterns and mental health. Only when the stress
subsides will the body return to normal.

when noradrenaline is released from nearby
nerves. When the signal finally arrives, the
organs start to respond.
The heart beats faster and the blood
vessels constrict, boosting blood supply
to the muscles and brain. The airways
relax, letting more oxygen pass into the
bloodstream, and the liver releases glucose
for extra fuel. The pupils widen to allow as
much light in as possible, sharpening central
vision, and the hands and feet become
sweaty, improving grip. For a few moments
you become superhuman. To allow all of
this to happen, non-essential systems have
to slow down. Blood vessels to the digestive
system, skin and kidneys narrow, diverting
vital nutrients away. Saliva dries up, appetite
disappears and the stomach stops churning.
The adrenal glands get some of the best
blood supply in the body, helping to get the
adrenaline out into the system at lightning
speed. Messages pass through so fast that by
the time adrenaline production starts, the
brain’s cortex might not even have clocked
the threat.
When we need to get out of the way
of a speeding car, we don’t have time for
conscious thought. It takes about two

Do we stand Noradrenaline is powerful, but the body

has a second chemical message that takes the
minutes for full adrenaline production to
switch on, and by this time the cortex has

a chance if we fight or flight response to the next level, and

that’s adrenaline.
caught up. Conscious processing comes back
on line and the powerful, problem-solving

stay and fight, The sympathetic nervous system sends

danger signals to the adrenal glands.
Positioned just above the kidneys, these small
parts of the brain can help with decisions
about what to do next.
Do we stand a chance if we stay and fight,
or would it organs are hormone factories, and their job
is to flood the blood with adrenaline. Deep
or would it be better for us to turn and run?
Whichever conscious choice we make, the
be better for in the centre of each one, in a part of the
gland called the adrenal medulla, chromaffin
fight or flight response has already made sure
that the body is ready.

us to turn cells start adrenaline production. These cells

connect to their neighbours via tiny holes
Sometimes, the answer is neither fight
nor flight, and the body’s built-in defence

and run? called gap junctions, so when one receives a

danger signal, the others respond as well.
system has a solution for that too. If a
predator is nearby but hasn’t seen you yet,

122 PSYCHOLOGY NOW

 FIGHT OR FLIGHT

it can be better to freeze to avoid detection.

The prefrontal cortex and the anterior
cingulate cortex talk back to the amygdala
The heart beats faster and
and hypothalamus. They can override
the sympathetic nervous system with the blood vessels constrict,
parasympathetic signals, slowing the heart
rate and calming the body down in the hope
that the danger will pass.
boosting blood supply to the
There’s only so long that the body can
maintain a full-blown fight or flight response.
muscles and brain
We can’t divert blood away from the
digestive system all day, so there’s a second parasympathetic nervous systems started to called Adrenoceptor Alpha 2C (ADRA2C),
phase of the response that kicks in later if work as a pair to control heart rate and divert which sits inside the cortex of the brain
the danger still hasn’t subsided. This is the blood away from the gut, and we all use listening for fight or flight signals. In lab
stress response. cortisol to manage stress. experiments, mice born without the gene
Stress signals come through the same Although the fight or flight response seems startle more easily and are quicker to attack,
pathway, beginning in the hypothalamus to be ancient, there are some unique things revealing that its normal job is to dampen
and ending in the adrenal glands, but they about the way in which humans react to the fight or flight response.
travel by a different route. This time, the danger. We are one of only two species in the A look at the gene in humans and
hypothalamus talks to the pituitary gland, entire animal kingdom that engages in war – chimpanzees showed up a natural change
telling it to release the adrenocorticotropic, bands of humans, and bands of in ADRA2C that means our brains make
or ATCH, hormone, into the blood. This then chimpanzees, come together to kill other less of it. If we are anything like mice, there
travels to the outer part of the adrenal glands, members of their own species in large- is a chance that this change might make
the adrenal cortex, which then switches on scale conflicts. It seems that this might have us more volatile in response to fight or
production of the stress hormone, cortisol. something to do with how our specific fight flight signals.
Cortisol backs up the fight or flight or flight systems evolved. However, our fight or flight response seems
responses for more long-term survival by When researchers looked at one of the to come at a cost. It might have originally
changing the body’s metabolism. It releases fight or flight genes in our brains, they evolved to get us out of danger, but it can just
sugar into the blood for fuel and dampens found something different. There’s a protein as easily get us into danger too.
non-essential systems like reproduction, the
immune response, growth and digestion.
The fight or flight response has helped our
species to flourish in the face of some of the
most dangerous situations on the planet, but
it’s not unique to humans. The ability to adapt
to dangers in the environment, or to escape
if adaptation isn’t possible, is a fundamental
part of animal survival.
Some fight or fight responses are incredibly
simple. Bacteria, for example, can sense
danger in their environment and respond by
switching genes on and off (fight) or moving
away (flight). But as organisms get larger, the
responses become more complex.
A fight or flight system for a complex body
like ours depends on a nervous system. We
need to be able to speed the heart up or
slow it down on demand to give our muscles
the boost they need when we’re in danger.
Invertebrates can do this to some extent,
but for the full experience it seems you need
a backbone.
Lampreys are some of the most ancient
living vertebrates, closely related to the
ancestors that gave rise to all modern fish,
amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals.
Their nervous systems are simpler than ours,
but they still have the components that are
needed to build the fight or flight response.
A look at the evolutionary tree reveals
that simpler vertebrates rely more on
© Getty Images / treety

adrenaline for their fight or flight responses,

and as vertebrates became more complex,
changes to the nervous system gave their
brains finer control. The sympathetic and

PSYCHOLOGY NOW 123


T
he English word ‘meditation’
comes from the Latin meditari,
which means to think or to
ponder. But the practice has its
roots much further east than
Rome. It originated in India as early as 4,000
years ago, before spreading eastwards to
China and Japan, and westwards along the
Silk Roads into Europe. Now, as brain scans
begin to pinpoint the neurophysiology of
meditative experiences, and research trials
explore the effects meditation practices can
have on our wellbeing, what began as a step
on a spiritual path towards enlightenment is
fast gaining a reputation as a panacea.
Neural rewiring for health
and wellbeing
There are hundreds of different ways to
practice meditation, but at their core, most
use a form of focused awareness to calm and
balance the mind. Though research is still
in its early stages, trials are starting to reveal
the difference that even a short meditation
practice can make to health problems like
depression, anxiety and insomnia.
It’s important to note at this stage some
of the challenges inherent in unpicking
the effects of meditation on the mind. It is
notoriously hard to design studies that truly
measure subjective effects on mood and
wellbeing, and due to the sheer number
of different meditation practices, it’s often
difficult to compare the results from one trial
to the next. The meditation experience of
124
MEDITATION AND THE BRAIN
THE BRAIN
Training the brain to remain in the
present moment can ease stress, reduce
anxiety and even lower blood pressure.
But how does it work?
WORDS LAURA MEARS
study participants can be variable, as can the
length and duration of the practices they’re
asked to perform as part of each trial.
The absolute gold standard in medical
research are randomised controlled trials.
In these studies, participants are randomly
separated into two groups: one receives the
experimental treatment, while the other
receives a different treatment or placebo as
a ‘control’. This enables researchers to really
measure the difference that the experimental
treatment makes. But designing a control for
meditation trials is tricky.
When researchers at Johns Hopkins
University trawled through more than 18,500
meditation research studies in 2014, they
found only 47 that met their strict criteria for
proper study design and control. But within
those 47 high-quality research papers, there
were some clear psychological benefits: an
eight-week meditation practice showed to
improve symptoms of anxiety, depression,
stress and pain.
This pattern of improvement in mental
health problems is mirrored elsewhere in the
meditation literature. Separate studies have
found that meditation helps to boost lifespan,
improve quality of life, lift mood and decrease
anxiety for people with cancer. It helps to
prevent relapse in people experiencing
repeated bouts of depression. And, it can
help people to cope with the symptoms of
menopause and irritable bowel syndrome.
Meditation also has positive effects on
wellbeing in people without underlying
PSYCHOLOGY NOW
 MEDITATION AND THE BRAIN

meditation
helps to
boost lifespan,
and decrease
anxiety
PSYCHOLOGY NOW 125
 MEDITATION AND THE BRAIN

LEARNING TO LET GO

Steve Harrison dedicated his life to the practice and teaching of yoga after a
n

transformational experience with a yoga master. We asked him why learning to meditate
h Wilks-Harriso

is so hard, and what we can do to make it easier.

“I think for me the first thing to understand is that meditation is a state, rather than a
ara

practice. It’s convenient to say ‘I practice meditation’, but it’s not really the case. We can
©S

create an internal environment that is conducive to slip into a meditative state, but you
can’t actually do meditation because meditation is where doing ceases to happen.”

WHY IS IT SO HARD TO LEARN TO GET INTO A MEDITATIVE STATE?

“In a modern world, it can be unrealistic to ask a mind to be able to focus. The obstacle that most people
encounter almost straight away is their own bodies. Physical discomfort is, for a lot of people, a distraction
from letting go into meditation. Sore knees, sore hips, backache… the body just keeps interfering.
Focus techniques are an incredibly subtle device that require an immense amount of willpower. It can turn
into a fight with ourselves to try to calm the mind when the body is not agreeing.”

WHAT CAN WE DO TO MAKE IT EASIER?

“The ancients spent thousands of years devising ways to help people manoeuvre into a
meditative state. It wasn’t only the mind that was worked on. If you can do simple things to
work with your body and your breathing, it will do a lot of work on the mind without the fight.
But the biggest thing for me, and I think the least spoken about, is our own psychology. Most
of us are incredibly identified with our thoughts and our sense of individuality. In order to
not constantly be pulled back into a thought stream about ourselves, we need to have a
genuine interest in finding a space or an experience that’s beyond our usual constructs of
who we think ourselves to be.

“Ask yourself, how would it be if I just let go of myself for a moment? We don’t disappear as a
result of slipping into meditation, we expand.”

health problems. It seems to improve working
memory, focused attention and emotional
regulation. In one study, participants listened
to either a guided meditation or a language
lesson. Then they were challenged with
disturbing images. Those who had meditated
were much quicker to recover from the
emotional hit.
A quiet space and a comfortable seat
So how does meditation change the way
our minds work? Many other tools that help
us with emotional control usually work on
the parts of the brain involved in conscious,
rational thought. But meditation practices
work differently. Rather than actively trying to
control our thinking, meditation techniques
train us to draw our attention away from
the parts of the brain involved in reasoning
and judging, and towards the more ancient
structures that are involved in awareness of
the present moment.
The brain constantly monitors incoming
signals from the outside world, passing
them through a structure just above the
brainstem called the thalamus. It works like
a comms relay, taking in sensory signals and
forwarding them on to other parts of the
brain for processing. Filtering this stream
of information is an active process; we
constantly and consciously have to choose
what to focus on.
Our focus decisions are complicated by
an additional stream of information, the

126 PSYCHOLOGY NOW

 MEDITATION AND THE BRAIN

meditation
techniques TRY THIS AT HOME
draw attention
away from Yoga teacher Steve Harrison shares a simple four-step meditation

reasoning practice for beginners. This is an indirect method to do a lot of

work on the mind without actually having to fight with the mind. Sit

and judging down, get comfortable, take some long, deep breaths, and create
an environment inside in which the mind can actually start to focus.
sensations from inside our bodies. These are BRING THE BODY INTO A
detected by the insula, the part of the brain
responsible for interoception, or internal
COMFORTABLE SPACE
self-awareness. It responds to feelings like The one key is to be comfortable. Any form of physical movement
pain, hunger and thirst, but also has a role in or intuitive stretch can make sure that the body is as fluid as
emotional awareness, and links in with other possible. Then ensure that the body is in the most conducive state
parts of the brain involved in attention. to relax, without falling asleep. Sit on a chair, or in an armchair, but
Deciding what sensation to focus on
always ensure you have a straight spine in order to keep the brain-
falls to a wide circuit of connected brain
regions called the ‘salience network’. It uses body connection alert.
the anterior insula (the internal sensor),
the anterior cingulate cortex (the attention
allocator) and the amygdala (the fear
centre), to listen in on external and internal SORT OUT YOUR BREATHING
sensations, before then working out where
we should put our focus. And it changes
If you’re looking for the quickest way to create an equilibrium in
when we meditate. your system, the breathing is the key. The state of the breathing
Meditation practices almost always begin reflects the state of the mind. If the breathing is agitated, the mind
by taking a comfortable seat in a quiet space. is agitated. If the breathing is calm, the mind will also become
This helps to minimise the internal and calm. Just gently start to control and deepen and steady the
external sensations fighting for our attention
breathing in order to calm the mind without directly trying to
and, over time, starts to change the way the
salience network operates. control the mind.
During meditation, the thalamus remains
active, still passing signals into the brain.
But, with fewer distractions, the mind has
room to focus in on sensations that often go FOCUS ON DEEP BREATHS
unnoticed, like the feeling of the breath.
In experienced meditators, the connections
It’s unrealistic to sit down and try to just watch your natural breath.
in the internal-sensing insula change and Don’t go too subtle too quickly – you will last seconds and then
strengthen, improving internal awareness, you’ll be off. You’ll have this constant ping-pong inside of returning
and grey matter in the attention-allocating to focus on your breath and then getting pulled back out again. So,
anterior cingulate cortex increases, aiding deepen your breathing, because deep breathing is much easier to
focus and flexible thinking. Meanwhile, the
focus upon.
prefrontal cortex, which makes decisions,
weakens its connection to the fear-inducing
amygdala. One study found that after just
eight weeks of meditation, the amygdala even
started to shrink in size. KEEP PRACTICING
On a whole-brain scale, imaging studies You can slip into a meditative state by accident, but to slip into
have discovered even more widespread
changes. Measures of white matter
it at will requires lots of training. The mind that’s not trained will
thickness show that meditation can boost generally be quite dissipated and unable to hold attention. But it’s
connections in the front of the brain, which not necessary for the health benefits and the wellbeing to achieve
contains areas involved in attention and the meditative state. Commit to regular, patient practice and just
emotional regulation. Simultaneously, reach towards the point of meditation; there are a whole host of
regular meditation practice seems to prune
benefits that come with the journey.
connections towards the back of the brain, in
areas that are involved in self-referencing and
egocentric processing.

PSYCHOLOGY NOW 127


Cutting out external interruptions and
turning inwards during meditation rewires
and reshapes the mind.
Focused attention in a wandering mind
Minimising distraction and internalising the
mind is just one part of a meditation practice.
The other major component is attention
training. Many practices have a particular
point of focus upon which to fix the attention;
the breath, a word or maybe a sensation.
Depending on the focal point, different
parts of the brain light up. Mantra meditations
activate the auditory cortex. Moving
THE MEDITATING BRAIN
1 8
1 PREFRONTAL CORTEX
This part of the default mode network is
responsible for decision making and
self-referencing. Alpha wave activity
(representing a relaxed brain state)
increases here during meditation.
2 PARIETAL LOBE
The parietal lobes process sensory
information, spatial orientation and
awareness of the body in 3D space.
Changes in activity here are linked to
spiritual meditative experiences.
3 THALAMUS
The brain’s sensory relay lights up during
meditation as attention turns to specific
sensations, like the feeling of the breath
in the lungs.
4 FRONTAL LOBE
Activity in the large lobes at the front of
the brain will increase as the meditator
starts to consciously control the focus of
their attention.
128
MEDITATION AND THE BRAIN
meditations activate the motor cortex and
cerebellum. And visual-focus meditations
activate the visual cortex. But studies on
blood flow in the brain have shown that,
rather than direct the attention outside of the
body, this kind of activity in a meditative state
actually helps us to look inside.
Focusing on a single external sense, like
sight, can activate the areas of the brain
involved in internal sensing and, while this
is happening, a part of the brain called the
medial prefrontal cortex slows down.
The medial prefrontal cortex is part of the
brain’s ‘default mode network’, the circuits
2
4 7
9
3
5 6
5 AMYGDALA
Activity in the brain’s fear centre
decreases. With prolonged meditation
practice, this part of the brain may even
shrink in size.
6 HIPPOCAMPUS
The part of the brain responsible for
memory storage rewires in long-term
meditators. The right hippocampus
increases in size, affecting spatial memory
and planning.
responsible for our sense of self. The network
lights up when we daydream, when we think
about others, when we ruminate on the past,
and when we project into the future. It tends
to become active when we withdraw from
the world into a resting state, but meditation
practice changes how it operates.
Inexperienced meditators often notice that
the mind tends to wander during meditation:
that’s the default mode network activating.
It’s the brain’s way of planning, processing
and thinking about itself, and it can run away
with us when our senses are internalised. But,
with practise, people seem to become better
7 ANTERIOR CINGULATE CORTEX
Meditation increases grey matter in the part of
the brain that handles attention allocation. This
may aid focus and flexible thinking.
8 INSULA
Repeated meditation practice increases the
connections inside the brain’s internal
sensation monitor, strengthening the brain’s
awareness of the body.
9 THOUGHT-FEAR CONNECTION
The link between the prefrontal cortex and the
amygdala weakens with meditation practice,
helping to stop fear and emotion interfering
with attention and concentration
PSYCHOLOGY NOW
 MEDITATION AND THE BRAIN

at noticing when the mind starts to wander,

and can learn to gently bring it back into
focus. And, with experience, the default mode
network actually starts to slow down.
A study of the brains of experienced
versus novice meditators at Yale University
found that repeated meditation practice
re-tunes the default mode network. But
rather than switch off, the network rewires.
The connections in the network that control
self-referencing and emotion weaken, while
those involved in awareness of the present
moment get stronger. This could explain why,
in a meditative state, we are able to witness
sensations, noticing the breath, the body or
the thoughts without trying to interfere.

Losing your self in the moment

The yogic scholar Patanjali described
meditation more as a state of mind than
an activity. The practices of removing
distraction, internalising the thoughts and
focusing the attention all serve to bring
the mind to a place where it can enter an
effortless meditative state. In this state, known
in Sanskrit as dhyana, the sense of self
dissolves, and the senses of space and time
also fall away.
This type of experience is one of the most
challenging to study because it is hard to
conjure up on demand, but scans of Tibetan
Buddhist meditators revealed that it might
be associated with a decrease in activity
in the parietal lobes. These brain regions
handle the processing involved in picturing
the body in 3D space, working out what’s
you and what isn’t, and keeping track of time.
Studies examining meditation in people
with anxiety, anger and high blood pressure meditation
Changes here seem to have the power to alter
our perception of ourselves, not only during
meditation, but also following other powerful
have found that meditation not only makes
people feel better, but it also reduces physical
markers of stress. Stress hormones drop,
makes people
out-of-body or loss-of-self experiences. In
another study, which asked nuns to relive
inflammation markers fall, heart rate lowers,
breathing slows down, and blood pressure
feel better,
past spiritual experiences, the parietal lobes
also showed shifting patterns of activity.
decreases. For some, a single meditation
session was enough to see a positive change. reducing
Body-mind connection and your
physical health
Molecular studies suggest that the effects
of meditation go deep into our physiology. In physical stress
Meditation has obvious effects on the
mind, but can also induce changes to the
a small study at Harvard University, scientists
found that 15 minutes of meditation every
day for eight weeks could change patterns
markers
body. Our psychology is powerfully linked of gene expression. Our cells each carry an and physical impact of a regular practice is to
to our physiology. Mental stress floods the entire copy of the human genome, but they experience it for yourself.
body with a trio of fight or flight hormones: only need to use a handful of genes at any It can be difficult to know where to
adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol. Their one time. So, they turn sets of genes on and begin, but although there are hundreds of
role is to prepare us to fight, freeze or flee. off depending on what’s happening around techniques, they can all lead to the same
They raise the heart rate, quicken breathing them. A regular meditation practice flipped tranquil state. It’s just a case of finding the
and alter the metabolism. the switch on 172 genes linked to the body methods that work for you. A good place to
Addressing feelings of stress using clock, sugar metabolism and inflammation. start is guided meditation. Allowing someone
meditation can change the state of the body else to take you through your practice –
© Getty Images / Lisitsa / Pikovit44

by transitioning the mind out of its ‘fight or
flight’ mode and into its opposite ‘rest and
digest’. It flips off the sympathetic nervous
system, which governs the stress response,
and flips on the parasympathetic nervous
system, thereby easing the strain placed on
the heart and lungs.
Beginning your own practice
Meditation is an active area of research and
debate in the scientific community, and there
is still much work to be done to understand
how it affects the brain and how best to use it
to improve health and wellbeing. But one of
the best ways to learn more about the mental
whether at a class, or via an app, video or
podcast – can help to keep you focused when
your mind starts to wander. And you don’t
have to commit to a long session. Research
suggests that just a short period of regular
training is enough for noticeable effects. Be
consistent, start small, and build slowly.

PSYCHOLOGY NOW 129

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OF EXPERT
ADVICE

Psychology
Now TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR MIND
FOR A HAPPIER, HEALTHIER LIFE

Human nature is a fascinating concept. From

the way we think to the way we behave, the
mind is a powerful yet delicate tool, and must
be nurtured in the same way we take care of
our bodies. Gaining a greater understanding
of human behaviour and mental processes
will ultimately lead to a better understanding
of ourselves. And once we realise why we
and others behave in certain ways – whether
alone or in group settings – it becomes much
easier to avoid stressful situations, reduce
anxiety, make better decisions, and live a
more fulfilled life.
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